‍As one of FreeWheel’s TV data partners, Samba TV will integrate its audience segments based on first-party TV data from 38M U.S. TV devices into FreeWheel’s Audience Manager to improve audience precision and match rates for client campaigns, just in time for the November elections

New York, NY – September 11, 2024 – FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the television advertising industry, and Samba TV, the leading provider of TV technology for audience data and omniscreen measurement, today announced the integration of Samba TV’s standard and custom audience segments into FreeWheel’s Audience Manager, a platform that enables publishers to unlock faster audience activation across screens. This first-of-its-kind partnership utilizes Samba TV’s opted-in, first-party automatic content recognition (ACR) data and FreeWheel’s large pool of premium inventory to help advertisers maximize reach, optimize frequency, and increase return on ad spend in real time.

“Direct Persuasion takes an audience-first, not publisher-first approach, to all of our voter contact efforts,” said Direct Persuasion CEO Daria Grastara. “Samba has always been our preferred partner to find audiences accurately, scale reach quickly, and utilize real-time behaviors of linear and streaming consumption as well as advertising exposure. ,” said Daria Grastara, CEO, Direct Persuasion. “Samba's new integration with FreeWheel now ensures we can pair Samba's audience-first approach with FreeWheel's publisher quality, scale, and diversity.”

FreeWheel clients are now able to activate audiences that use Samba TV data from 38M U.S. TVs, including more than 1,000 prebuilt Samba TV audience segments. FreeWheel clients are also afforded the additional benefit of creating their own custom targeting segments based on TV consumption behaviors, content exposure, and demographics with just a 24-hour turnaround. For example, this could include cost-effectively engaging with viewers who tuned into a major tentpole TV event, or were exposed to a competitor’s ads. The insights are gathered from Samba TV’s breadth of smart TV brands (10 smart in the U.S. and 24 globally), named the most comprehensive TV dataset in the industry by Frost & Sullivan.

“At FreeWheel, we are focused on connecting all parts of the TV advertising industry to make it work better,” said FreeWheel Chief Revenue Officer Katy Loria. “By partnering with Samba TV to add audience segments based on first-party ACR data for the first time into our Audience Manager platform, we are helping media buyers reach audiences that matter. With the elections less than two months away, this new offering is a valuable asset for our clients who are looking to quickly and accurately retarget viewers in a privacy-centric way, such as after a debate or breaking news.” 

"Our partnership with FreeWheel allows advertisers the ability to combine high-quality, biddable media  with real-time targeting precision across TV, streaming and digital platforms to connect with audiences who are consuming media in new and diverse ways," said Samba TV Co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin. “This is a crucial strategy to reach the entire electorate efficiently in one of the most pivotal elections in history.” 

“The team at Bully Pulpit International is constantly seeking innovative solutions to deliver precision-targeted messaging to voters at the most impactful moments,” said Bully Pulpit Interactive Managing Director, Media Ivanka Farrell.. “The integration of Samba TV's real-time audience targeting with FreeWheel’s advanced technology empowers us to harness the full potential of ACR data, allowing us to reach voters based on their actual TV viewership in near real-time. This partnership enables us to deliver the right message to the right audience exactly when it matters most, ensuring our campaigns are as effective and timely as possible,” said Ivanka Farrell, Managing Director, Media at Bully Pulpit Interactive.

About FreeWheel

FreeWheel empowers all segments of The New TV Ecosystem. We are structured to provide the full breadth of solutions the advertising industry needs to achieve their goals. We provide the technology, data enablement and convergent marketplaces required to ensure buyers and sellers can transact across all screens, across all data types, and all sales channels, in order to ensure the ultimate goal – results for marketers. With offices in New York, Chicago, London, Paris, Beijing, and across the globe, FreeWheel, A Comcast Company, stands to advocate for the entire industry through the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. For more information, please visit https://www.freewheel.com/, and follow us on X and LinkedIn. 

About Samba TV

Samba TV has transformed the TV from a pane of glass on the wall to a window into the heart of audiences. We are the global leader in television technology powering real-time insights and audience targeting to enable unparalleled marketing efficiency and effectiveness. Our proprietary first-party data from tens of millions of opted-in televisions, across more than 20 TV brands sold in over one hundred countries, provides advertisers and media companies a unified view of the entire consumer journey. Our independent measurement has future-proofed advertising for the next generation, empowering advertisers to connect with their audiences on any platform, across every screen.