Channel 4 launches digital ad sales service with BT Sport

Channel 4 has launched a digital ad sales service aimed at third party content publishers, with BT Sport on board as its first partner.

The digital ad sales house will offer advertisers “unique first-party data” and Channel 4 is seeking partnerships with broadcaster on-demand platforms, news content publishers and multi-channel networks.

Channel 4 said that expanding into digital ad sales representation will help it to grow its digital revenue and to compete with global media giants like Facebook and Google. BT Sport’s dynamic advertising inventory will be exclusively sold through 4 Sales from this month.

Channel 4’s head of digital and partnership innovation, Jonathan Lewis, said that it will offer advertisers and agencies a “large-scale, one-stop-shop for quality digital content which is underpinned by Channel 4’s reputation as an advertiser-safe environment, leading ad tech innovation and our award-winning viewer data strategy”.

“BT Sport has arguably one of the most demanded premium dynamic ad inventory in the market with its exclusive UEFA Champions League coverage, 42 Premier League games, The Emirates FA Cup, and Premiership and European Rugby and we look forward to welcoming them and more partners on board in 2018,” he added.

Jeremy Rosenberg, head of advertising partnerships at BT said: “We are delighted to be partnering with Channel 4 with their advanced DAI (dynamic ad insertion) solution to drive efficiencies and relevant advertising across BT Sport’s live streaming service across desktop and our award winning app.”

The news comes after Channel 4 became an exclusive UK partner to the European Broadcaster Exchange (EBX) in November, taking a 25% stake in the new business alongside its three establishing partners ProSiebenSat.1, TF1 and Mediaset.

EBX aims to establish a European video-on-demand exchange to cater for the growing demand for multi-territory video campaigns at scale, initially traded programmatically. It will be headquartered in London and is due to start trading in early 2018.

In other ad-related news, last April Channel 4 launched a new interactive VOD format that lets advertisers address viewers by name using data provided by the 15 million people registered to Channel 4’s digital and on-demand service All 4.