Channel 4 unveils Project Agora for targeted VOD advertising

UK commercial broadcaster Channel 4 has unveiled new targeted advertising capability that will be launched commercially this autumn.

Showcasing the technology, codenamed Project Agora, at a  Channel 4 Upfronts event at London’s Roundhouse, chief commercial officer Jonathan Allan said that the Channel 4-developed technology will enable advertisers to match their own custom audience segments across Channel 4 platforms in a cookie-less, GDPR compliant way for the first time.

Channel 4 has a 20 million-strong active registered viewer base that can be targeted with VOD advertising.

Over 70% of Channel 4 VOD platform All 4’s revenue is currently generated through advertisers buying against first party registered viewer data.  According to Channel 4, the new product will allow advertisers to leverage their own data capabilities to create their own bespoke, custom audience segments that can be targeted on All 4, ensuring that  clients can increase the scale and cost-effectiveness of their efforts to reach young audiences.

“I am really excited about taking this product to market later in the year.  Coming off the back of the launch of Dynamic TV earlier this year – which enables potentially thousands of variations of data-driven creative to be served across big screen devices like smart TVs – there really isn’t a better time for advertisers to create personalised and targeted ad campaigns with Channel 4,” said Jonathan Lewis, head of digital and partnership innovation at Channel 4, who is leading the product development,

“Not many publishers have the volume of registered data that we do and that means we can offer this data matching proposition to our clients.  We believe this will put us another step ahead of our competition and equal the offering that you can get from the pureplay digital platforms – but within a much safer and compliant environment.”