FOX Television Stations partnered with Facebook’s video platform LiveRail on Thursday. The deal enables advertisers to buy inventory alongside local news video footage across 28 stations in 17 markets, including sites like myfoxny.com and myfoxla.com.
“We know there is more demand for premium video,” said Joe Oulvey, EVP of Fox Station Sales, noting that video CPMs are rising. “This video is not homemade in a basement, it’s professionally edited video created by people with journalism expertise.”
Quality video is in low supply: YouTube announced in October it had sold out of its Google Preferred inventory for the year, and political campaigns that didn’t book video inventory early were out of luck.
And after announcing it would push into video, Rubicon Project said in its earnings call it expected slow growth in the video market, citing substandard, unacceptable inventory in exchanges.
FOX will onboard some of its existing clients to LiveRail’s private exchange. It will create additional demand by plugging into LiveRail’s open exchange.
Traditionally, FOX sold its video inventory two ways: cross-platform buys with television advertisers, and digital-only buys. Both types of clients can use LiveRail, which many advertisers favor since it allows them target bids to specific audiences.
“If there’s a winter weather event in one of our markets, LiveRail would enable a warm weather tourism client to target in those specific geolocations,” Oulvey said.
The conversations with LiveRail started prior to its July acquisition by Facebook.
“The whole space is evolving for local TV inventory,” Oulvey said. “This is a positive experience for us from a revenue perspective and it allows digital advertisers to realize there’s an easy way to buy these quality impressions.”
