Xandr today announced growing engagement with its Invest TV platform by both advertisers and media companies, since its launch in March 2020. High-demand networks from A+E Networks® and Crown Media Family Networks are now participating in automated audience-based selling. Major brands, including AT&T, are in planning, buying, and execution stages for multiple campaigns in which they have activated custom audience segments across all of Xandr’s programmer partners. 

Invest TV empowers buyers to activate unique audiences and achieve unified reach across today’s largest TV media owners – all through a streamlined, automated UI. The platform sits within the Xandr Invest buying product suite.

Earlier this year, Xandr announced that AMC Networks, Disney and WarnerMedia were participating in automated audience-based selling through Invest TV. The addition of A+E Networks (A&E®; HISTORY®; Lifetime®) and Crown Media increases the number of available networks to buyers to 52, with a combined reach of 90% of US TV-viewing households.

“Xandr Invest offers the automation and data-driven approach that brands need to make a significant impact. Through unified reach forecasting and measurement in a systems-based process, it opens up a streamlined and flexible way of reserved advanced TV buying,” Mike Welch, head of Xandr. “Xandr is moving the TV advertising industry forward, alongside top programmers like A+E Networks and Crown Media Family Networks.”

“At A+E Networks, we continue our well-established leadership role in providing audience based automated solutions,” said Peter Olsen, president, ad sales, A+E Networks. “We are pleased to expand our A+E Precision & Performance offerings with the addition of Xandr Invest which complements our relentless focus on delivering on our marketing/advertising partners’ goals by providing access to our valuable audience and our premium content through solutions and platforms, whether direct or automated.”

“With the advent of innovative new technologies that yield key data-driven insights, our industry has reached an inflection point in the way advertisers reach their target audiences in the most impactful, efficient way possible,” said Ed Georger, EVP, advertising sales and digital media, Crown Media Family Networks. “Our partnership with Xandr, a platform that is leading the charge in this space, allows us to more optimally serve our clients and help them meet their core business objectives.”

Since launch, major holding companies and brands, including AT&T, have been capitalising on Invest TV’s automation of data-driven TV campaigns, which allows the direct flow of buyers’ campaign specifications and RFPs to the sellers’ optimisation and proposals platform. Campaigns have run and are planned to run across multiple TV programmers, with buyers leveraging advanced audience segments built with Nielsen, Xandr Audience Segments and the buyer’s first-party data.

“We are thrilled to see more of our top media partners make Linear TV content available to book, measure and report through tech platforms like Invest TV. It’s clear that technology and automation can be our friend as the pandemic has further exposed the highly manual nature of legacy TV  business models, especially at a time when advertisers need speed and flexibility to optimise Linear TV for higher performance more than ever,” said Michael Piner, SVP, video & data driven investment, Mediahub. “We believe adding technology and automation to the Linear TV business model going forward will enable the digital-like accountability, targetability and optimisation capabilities that our advertisers desire at scale.”

“Here at Hearts & Science, delivering effective reach and optimal frequency is critical to our clients,” said Larry Hunt, senior director, integrated video investment, Hearts & Science. “The ability to negotiate with multiple partners, utilising one audience currency while garnering a holistic view of Reach and Frequency is a huge benefit to working in the Xandr Invest TV platform.”

The announcement sees A+E Networks and Crown Media expand their existing relationship with Xandr, now selling across TV and digital media. Both use Xandr’s Monetize SSP to power their programmatic monetisation for OTT video inventory, connecting media buyers to premium OTT inventory in private marketplaces.