FreeWheel Brings Attention, Quality and Emotional Resonance Signals into CTV Buying

Today FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the television advertising ecosystem, introduced new third-party inventory scoring capabilities within its Premium Signals Packaging, which creates dynamic inventory packages based on how viewers engage with premium CTV environments. By bringing independent quality, attention and engagement signals into curated inventory packages, FreeWheel helps buyers evaluate supply through factors like attention, ad experience and live moments — signals that can influence how ads are received, remembered and acted on — while giving publishers additional ways to package, differentiate and monetize premium inventory.

Research shows audience engagement and media quality signals such as attention, ad experience, live indicators have the most influence on advertisers when it comes to buying more programmatic streaming inventory. FreeWheel’s new capability scores and packages video inventory using supply signals including number of ad breaks, ad duration, time of day, live or on-demand device type and more, to empower buyers to evaluate how their ads will be viewed and recalled while giving publishers a clearer way to differentiate and monetize premium inventory.

“As CTV buying enters a new accountability era, the market needs more than scale; it needs a better way to understand not only what viewers are watching, but how they are watching,” said Larry Allen, Vice President, Global Strategy at FreeWheel. “FreeWheel is leading this shift by operationalizing quality-informed trading at the source, helping publishers build more dynamic inventory packages around engagement signals like attention, ad experience, and live moments. That gives buyers more confidence that their media investments are reaching viewers in environments more likely to support attention, recall and brand impact, while creating more differentiated, higher-value opportunities for publishers.”

At launch, FreeWheel is working with third-party measurement and validation partners focused on signals such as inventory quality, attention, media environment, engagement, and emotion, including Mediaprobe, Adelaide, and Magid. By using signals to evaluate supply, FreeWheel is making inventory more performant and quality focused, creating new opportunities to align inventory packages to buyer demand and introduce smarter pricing and yield levers for publishers.

Inventory Scoring Partner Offerings:

• Quality and clutter: Mediaprobe measures the emotional intensity and quality of programming context at the placement level, helping assess media quality and clutter.

• Media quality and outcome potential: Adelaide’s omnichannel AU metric predicts a placements’ likelihood of capturing attention and contributing to business outcomes, helping advertisers identify and buy higher-quality inventory.

• Emotion and engagement: Magid uses survey-based panels and content research to measure attention, perceptions of quality, emotion, and engagement, identifying the emotional context of different content environments and varying levels and types of engagement.

These signals matter because the structure and quality of the viewing experience can directly influence advertiser outcomes. For example, FreeWheel and Mediaprobe research found that ad loads of six minutes per hour delivered 89% higher recall than ad loads of 12 minutes per hour, underscoring how factors such as ad load and break clutter can affect whether viewers remember a brand.

“As CTV advertising becomes more accountable, the industry needs a more nuanced understanding of the quality and context of premium supply,” said Nicolas Grand, Executive Director of Research & Value Analytics at WPP Media U.S. “FreeWheel’s approach reflects the direction we’re taking at WPP Media — using signals such as attention, emotional engagement, and motivation, alongside the right media environment, to connect the quality of the viewing experience to business outcomes and ultimately make media investment more effective.”

With these new capabilities, FreeWheel is helping move programmatic CTV beyond scale alone and toward a more transparent, quality-informed marketplace that is better aligned to advertiser outcomes. Research shows that attention and outcomes, including purchase intent, are closely related. The longer a participant looked at an ad, the more significant the increase was in awareness, consideration, preference, and action intent. ¹

By bringing independent signals into the inventory layer, FreeWheel can help buyers make more informed decisions, identify environments more likely to support attention and recall, help publishers better differentiate their supply and create a stronger foundation for future measurement and outcomes-based opportunities.

About FreeWheel

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, provides comprehensive ad platforms for publishers, advertisers and media buyers. Powered by premium video marketplace technology, FreeWheel enables its clients to manage, monetize and optimize their advertising businesses across all screens, data types and sales channels.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260917273119/en/

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