News

by Kristina Knight

British Sky Broadcasting (Sky) has tapped video technology hub FreeWheel to serve video advertising across several of its platforms and services. The move was preceded by FreeWheel's opening of an office in London. Sky is the leading pay television provider in the UK.

"FreeWheel's technology and infrastructure offers not only the capabilities that our video advertising business requires today, but also other features that will help maintain our position in the future,such as its strength in mobile video ad serving and ability to manage multiple media platforms," said Tim Hussain, Head of Platform Development and Partnerships at Sky.

Through the partnership, Sky will use FreeWheel's Monetization Rights Management exclusively to forecast and serve video advertising across its sites; the platform is known for its forecasting capabilities. FreeWheel will be used for both online and mobile video advertising.

In January comScore's Video Metrix 2.0 tool for the UK was launched; at that time researchers noted that nearly 35 million UK consumers were watching video content. In November 2010 more than 6 billion videos were viewed online, most through Google sites, including YouTube. BBC sites and VEVO were also in the top three for video consumption.

"Robust video ad management infrastructure is critical as more and more consumers access media content through their mobile devices and as more of these devices hit the market,"said Doug Knopper, co-founder and co-CEO at FreeWheel. "Sky invests heavily in its programming, and FreeWheel's technology empowers Sky to make the most of its content across the range of platforms and devices on which it has a presence."