AMC PARTNERS WITH CHARTER, COMCAST, COX FOR TV/VOD ADDRESSABILITY SOLUTION

AMC Networks has partnered with Charter’s Spectrum Reach, Comcast advertising, and Cox Media to enable addressable capabilities on its own linear and VOD television advertising. The three distributors are the founding members of the “On Addressability initiative,” which launched last June to accelerate the industry’s ability to deliver an attainable and sustainable solution to marketers that maximizes the impact and value of television. “Addressable is the future of advertising and with On Addressability, we are finally bringing the future into the present,” said Kim Kelleher, President of Commercial Revenue and Partnerships, AMC Networks.

As part of the addressability pilot, AMC will allocate a portion of its commercials to addressable ads delivered to aggregated household audiences across the Charter, Comcast, and Cox cable television footprints, consistent with each company’s commitment to privacy. This will increase the amount of addressable advertising inventory available to national advertisers and provide additional scale. "We launched the On Addressability initiative last year because as MVPDs, we are responsible for delivering ads into viewers’ households," said Marcien Jenckes, President, Comcast Advertising. "Enabling addressable TV has to begin with the content distributors who lay the groundwork and set up the infrastructure."

The initiative focuses on how to enable addressability based on the learnings of its participants. This includes defining common practices and standards, enabling technical solutions, and working to solve larger challenges surrounding addressability, such as measurement. Charter, Comcast, and Cox are working with Canoe Ventures for linear and video on demand addressability, giving programmers one main entity to interact with to reach a larger, unified footprint of households across all three MVPDs. “Even though MVPDs have inventory across all platforms, IP, VOD, online-included-linear television is still where the majority of viewing takes place, so if we can bring better targeting and more scale to TV advertising while maintaining security and brand safety, everyone wins,” said David Kline, Executive Vice President, Charter Communications and President, Spectrum Reach. 

According to the company, the move will make way to better serve customers, including agencies, brands, and viewers. “These addressable trials signal an inflection point that will bring scale and accessibility to addressable campaigns for national advertisers. It’s an important new solution in our tool kit," said Louis Gump, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Cox Media.