Sky and Virgin have announced plans to combine their targeted advertising programmes. It will give the two companies access to a total of 30 million viewers in the UK and Ireland.
The partnership will be led jointly by Virgin Media Solutions Executive Lead and MD TV3, Pat Kiely and Sky’s Group Director of Advanced Advertising, Jamie West.
“Quality programming deserves to be supported with quality advertising. In partnering with Sky we’re putting the UK and Ireland at the forefront of TV advertising innovation. We’re giving consumers advertising that is more relevant to them and giving brands a trusted destination to deliver intelligent, tailored TV campaigns to a targeted audience,” said Keily
Virgin will use technology developed by parent company Virgin Media and Sky’s targeting system AdSmart. It’s the intention to allow other sales houses and channels to use AdSmart.
“TV remains the most effective and trusted advertising medium there is and continues to innovate at pace. Addressable TV is the high quality, brand safe and transparent medium that leading brands have already been adopting in their thousands. Today’s partnership takes that to the next level with the extension of AdSmart to millions more homes meaning more relevant ads for Virgin customers and a larger platform for advertisers,” said West.
As of last month, AdSmart has secured 1,130 advertisers and run 7,635 campaigns. The impressions total stands at 5 billion and percentage of new to TV or Sky Media is 73%. The return rate is 75% and there have been 1,226 AdSmart targeting attributes, 2,709 postcode campaigns and 544 custom segment campaigns.