Yahoo and DIRECTV Advertising Expand Advanced TV Partnership to Include Set-Top Box Data

Partnership bridges the gap between linear and digital campaigns to unlock new value for buyers

Yahoo announced an expansion of its partnership with DIRECTV Advertising to include set-top box (STB) data, backed by market-leading privacy protection protocols. With the expanded partnership, Yahoo’s demand-side platform (DSP) customers can now activate TV usage data from millions of DIRECTV households to optimize planning, activation and measurement of digital campaigns across DIRECTV and non-DIRECTV inventory. Today, Yahoo is the only omnichannel DSP to have access to DIRECTV Advertising’s STB data.

Set-top box data provides second-by-second information about program viewing and TV consumption. Against the backdrop of the increasingly fragmented media landscape, the data partnership between Yahoo and DIRECTV Advertising uses STB data to unlock new value for buyers, bridging the gap between linear and digital – all while protecting user privacy.

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“DIRECTV Advertising has been an innovative leader in delivering data-driven advanced TV solutions for its customers for years”

“The addition of DIRECTV’s set-top-box linear viewership data adds another diverse, unique data source, enhancing client campaigns across the digital landscape,” said Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, Chief Revenue Officer at Yahoo. “We have built a multi-sourced data backbone for our advanced TV suite aligned to industry best practices that empowers marketers with the ability to plan and activate more efficiently than ever across linear and connected TV inventory.”

This integration further reinforces Yahoo’s position as the platform for advanced TV (ATV) advertising, with access to live linear viewership data, but also unique and valuable connected TV (CTV) viewership data directly from CTV providers and publishers, as well as Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) data from providers like Inscape, which captures any content that “hits the glass.” The data builds upon Yahoo’s own consented, first-party data from direct relationships with its users in a privacy-first manner.

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“DIRECTV Advertising has been an innovative leader in delivering data-driven advanced TV solutions for its customers for years,” said Amy Leifer, Chief Advertising Sales Officer of DIRECTV. “Our partners know the enormous value of our set-top box data, and expanding our partnership with Yahoo allows us to broaden the use into the programmatic space. We’re thrilled to bring our data to a new set of buyers through Yahoo’s platform and further expand access to DIRECTV’s seamless addressable and CTV offerings through this partnership.”

This announcement expands on Yahoo and DIRECTV Advertising’s already successful relationship. Earlier this year, Yahoo and DIRECTV announced that, together, they would provide buyers with a more seamless way to access addressable TV and streaming inventory. By adding DIRECTV Advertising, Yahoo expanded its position as the first and only omnichannel DSP to offer live, addressable TV inventory programmatically, enabling advertisers to tap into a footprint of 25 million households across DIRECTV, DISH Media and Fios. DIRECTV Advertising also tapped into Yahoo’s supply-side platform (SSP), making its streaming inventory available to premium demand across the Yahoo Exchange.