Dive Brief:
- Millennial Media was acquired by AOL in September for $240 million and has now partnered with Rentrak to roll out its first new product since the deal – TV Commercial Retargeting
- The product will allow marketers to retarget TV ad viewers with mobile video ads through Rentrak’s TV commercial viewer data.
- Rentrak has access to set-top box data from various cable and satellite providers in 25 million.
Dive Insight:
“One of the main reasons we partnered with [Rentrak] is their leadership position in the TV measurement space,” Liza Blumenthal, vp sales, northeast for Millennial Media, told AdExchager. “Their scale paired with Millennial Media’s scale across 65,000 apps and 190 million unique users a month, will make multiscreen behavior easier to understand for advertisers.”
With the product advertisers can retarget TV viewers who have seen both their ads and also their competitors’ ads with mobile video ads. Blumenthal told Adweek, "TV has become the big screen, and mobile is really the small screen. That presents an interesting challenge for marketers who have to reach consumers across all these different and newer screens."
What's more, AOL's parent company, Verizon, has a large mobile user base that creates vast amounts of data. This trove of data adds to the data capabilities the new product offers.
Over the past five years, mobile use has soared, and the pivot over is leading to new ad products, revamped ad strategies and changing budget allocations.
"Mobile has really become the second screen, and we're helping advertisers capitalize on that trend," Blumenthal said.