Inside Universal Ads’ plan to reach the next 100K buyers of TV ads

That level of sign-on speaks to advertisers’ desire to reach diverse audiences, with Scripps calling out women’s sports on ION, Estrella speaking to Hispanic and Black segments and Fuse Media focusing on young, multicultural audiences. Although all of these companies in some ways compete, they are united in facing challenges from digital players like Google, Facebook and TikTok.

“The reason why we have all these partners participating is that what we’re doing is incremental. It’s net-new, it’s reaching a population of buyers that we know are spending money that we are better suited together to go after versus on a piecemeal basis,” Grant explained. “I think advertisers that try video for the first time want to try video as a category most of the time.”

Along with buying ads on the basis of audience, these advertisers are also focused on results. To that end, Universal Ads in March teamed with ad firm Measured to provide incrementality-based media measurement and optimization for advertisers that are more concerned with sales attribution than reach and frequency metrics typical to TV campaigns.

“Measured is a major leader in that space, and it’s the first of many partnerships, from a measurement perspective, we’re prioritizing to check that box, which is a gap for a lot of e-commerce buyers interested in TV today,” Grant said.

The next step for Universal Ads is partnering with technology firms that help e-commerce advertisers produce TV creative quickly and easily. The platform plans to offer free, artificial intelligence-supported creative production of TV commercials to its clients. The move echoes how Roku last year provided free use of Spaceback, a platform that repurposes social content into connected TV ads, to brands using its self-service platform.

“It’s one of those things that’s prevented smaller buyers from getting into TV in the past: They don’t have a living room screen-ready commercial for their business,” Grant said.

That technology also allows for more dynamic creative, or the way that brands can dynamically insert best-selling or newly arrived products into YouTube or Instagram ads — a capability that doesn’t yet exist at scale on TV. With the addition of those tools, Universal Ads could help thousands of advertisers join the premium video race.

“Because we’ve spent years being a neutral trusted partner to a lot of those businesses, it was a relatively easy pitch,” Grant said of Universal Ads. “They know what they’re getting with Comcast and FreeWheel, and being an extension of that relationship has been a massive advantage for us.”

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