CANNES \u2013 If the powers that be at FreeWheel Advertisers could snap their fingers and make it happen, buying video across platforms would be as simple as buying a spot on traditional television has been for decades. Until then, their vehicle for achieving this goal is the company formerly known as Strata\u2014now FreeWheel Advertisers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still very cumbersome and difficult for advertisers to buy TV across screen and we all on the inside know the labor and intricacies of those challenges,\u201d says Joy Baer, President, FreeWheel Advertisers, FreeWheel, which is a Comcast company.<\/p>\n
FreeWheel Advertisers processes roughly one-quarter of total U.S. ad spend annually, servicing 7,500 media buyers at 1,200 media buying agencies and in-house advertisers in the U.S. and Europe. In this interview with Beet.TV at the recent\u00a0Cannes<\/a> Lions International Festival of Creativity, Baer explains the ramifications of cross-screen buying challenges for her clients.<\/p>\n \u201cThey in turn create real significant margin problems for the agencies because they\u2019re under such pressure to begin with. Their only solution to really solve for TV meaningfully is to throw additional investment and throw additional bodies at the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n FreeWheel Advertisers is bringing to bear measurement and technical capabilities \u201cso that TV can be as easy to buy as a spot was fifteen, twenty years ago,\u201d says Baer, who started at Strata<\/a> in 2007.<\/p>\n Many agencies maintain a completely separate digital department while using a whole host of tools to buy digital media, and there\u2019s a crossover. \u201cThe digital platforms that they use in the space are DSP\u2019s and DMP\u2019s to help them target and make sense of different audiences and make sense of the data that\u2019s available out there to target television today.\u201d<\/p>\n Nonetheless, it\u2019s not enough to reach \u201cthe real living room, to actually get to where television has its largest impact,\u201d Baer<\/a> adds. \u201cWe have to get to a cross-screen solution and combine the capabilities of these DSP\u2019s with our platforms that work so well in linear. And that\u2019s exactly what FreeWheel and FreeWheel Advertisers endeavors to do.\u201d<\/p>\n