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Satellite TV giants DirecTV and Dish Network said Monday that they will partner on selling political advertising.
They will “offer an addressable advertising platform of unprecedented scale and reach for political campaigns,” the companies said. “The strategic relationship will allow participating statewide political campaigns to target their TV ads at the household level within 20+ million DirecTV and Dish homes.”
The companies will continue to run their other ad sales activities separately.
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Wall Street has at times suggested that DirecTV and Dish could consider another attempt at merging amid heightened chatter about possible combinations of cable operators. For example, Charter Communications has offered to acquire Time Warner Cable, which has so far called the offered price tag too low.
DirecTV CEO Mike White has said that a merger would have financial and strategic benefits, but would likely face regulatory hurdles. He has suggested that the two firms could cooperate in some areas though.
“The DirecTV/Dish addressable advertising platform utilizes highly sophisticated and targeted technology that will allow political campaigns to specifically reach swing voters with TV ads,” says Keith Kazerman, senior vp ad sales at DirecTV. “The platform not only uniquely monetizes big data, which has become critical to every political campaign, but it does it at scale. It’s the perfect complement to local … cable buys and a fiscally compelling alternative to local broadcast.”
“Individually, Dish and DirecTV have pioneered household-addressable advertising across a national footprint for more than two years,” says Warren Schlichting, Dish senior vp media sales. “As campaigns utilize more and more data, household-addressable advertising introduces a powerful tool to deliver a tailored message to a precise and measurable audience.”
E-mail: Georg.Szalai@THR.com
Twitter: @georgszalai
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