GroupM Launches Finecast, A New Addressable TV Business in the U.K.

Finecast Helps Advertisers Address Premium, Big-Screen Viewers as They Fragment Across an Expanding Universe of TV Platforms

London, 27 September, 2017 – GroupM, the media investment group of WPP, today announced the launch of Finecast, a company delivering digital-like precision and accountability to advertising on television. As TV audiences fragment across a range of platforms and as viewing behaviours evolve, TV advertisers are grappling with how to continue making best use of one of their most trusted mediums. GroupM is launching Finecast to solve this challenge.

Finecast enables advertisers to precision-target viewers across multiple on demand, linear and live streaming TV environments. It helps advertisers address hard-to-reach TV viewers through a single access point with standardised measurement. All Finecast campaigns are inherently viewable, running on TV screens within high-quality, brand-safe content with no ad blocking.

“Finecast is built to strengthen the TV ecosystem for advertisers and media partners alike. By unlocking the ability to be targeted in TV campaigns, Finecast opens the door for new advertisers who haven’t used TV before, and it gives traditional TV advertisers new ways to use the medium. This represents tremendous upside for TV broadcasters,” said Kelly Clark, Global Chief Executive Officer, GroupM. “Through partnerships and joint investment, Finecast will also provide a platform for industry collaboration on new products and measurement standards.”

Jakob Nielsen, previously Managing Director at GroupM Digital in the UK, is named Chief Executive Officer of Finecast. Nielsen joined GroupM from Microsoft in 2009. His Finecast leadership team includes Chief Product officer, Rich Astley. Together, they will lead the continuous development of market-leading addressable TV technology and help set industry best practice standards for programmatic and addressable TV internationally.

Now live and running campaigns in the UK, Finecast is the first company giving advertisers the ability to deliver targeted adverts to audiences across multiple TV channel brands, pay-TV platforms and set top boxes, a range of video on demand (VOD)/catch up TV services, over-the-top providers, and game consoles – all combined for scale. At launch, this includes distribution across Sky, Virgin Media, Samsung, YouView, Amazon Fire, Roku, and gaming consoles such as Xbox. Finecast’s vision of a truly multiplatform, multi-broadcaster addressable TV solution will extend to other markets around the world over time.

“In our most recent marketing campaign, ‘Go Binge’, we wanted to reach people that love bingeing on TV shows but often access this content via connected devices as opposed to traditional broadcasting. Finecast enabled us to target our audience in previously hard-to-reach, on-demand platforms, and it helped us meet our campaign goals with robust measurement of key metrics. Overall, we’re delighted with the outcomes and look forward to further new and exciting ways of increasing targeted engagement”, said spokesperson, Three UK.

With access to over 180 different targeting segments, from socio-economic to life stage, purchase and financial data, Finecast can identify and reach precise audience profiles on the big screen. Finecast is integrated with major industry data platforms such as Acxiom, Experian, MasterCard and Kantar to power audience discovery and targeting. Finecast is also integrated with [m]Platform and will soon be activating campaign targeting at the household level using [m]Platform audience segments.

Each Finecast campaign is custom built around the advertiser’s audience target or response objective for TV campaigns and provides a more targeted and faster path to market than traditional linear TV advertising. Finecast is already seeing demand for campaigns from both large brand advertisers and response oriented marketers looking to leverage TV to drive sales more tactically.

“The time is right for traditional TV and over-the-top providers to scale their new classes of addressable inventory to the benefit of our advertisers and to meet demand for targeted TV advertising,” said Nielsen. “With the rapid growth of digital advertising, TV budgets may be at risk from new competitors, particularly as digital video improves in quality and ease of access. Finecast’s offer of scaled cross-platform addressable TV solutions is a win-win for TV providers, their advertisers, and consumers who can enjoy highly relevant commercial messages in their big screen viewing.”