Fox Strengthens Video Ad Capabilities With LiveRail Partnership

To further monetize display and video impressions across its owned-and-operated properties, Fox Television Stations has inked a deal with LiveRail, a digital programming company owned by Facebook.

Under the agreement, LiveRail will help Fox run video ads across local websites for 28 stations in 17 markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Houston.

This is not Fox’s first foray into the programmatic space. In September of this year, the TV network partnered with Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Vindico to monetize display and video impressions.

But today’s partnership with Facebook is hoped to further boost Fox’s video programmatic performance. “By adding LiveRail to our digital video programmatic solution, the Fox TV Stations Group extends our existing platform to better enable advertisers to target desired consumers of our video content in the credible and brand-safe environment,” Joe Oulvey, executive vice president of Fox stations sales, said in a statement.

According to eMarketer, U.S. programmatic digital display ad spending will increase 137 percent to top $10 billion this year. And the programmatic market will continue to rise because of mobile.

eMarketer predicts that mobile will account for 44 percent of all U.S. programmatic display ad spending this year. And it will surpass desktop as early as next year, representing 56 percent of all programmatic ad expenditure.

At a Facebook ad-tech whiteboard session held in New York City yesterday, the company’s vice president of ads product marketing and Atlas, Brian Boland, said, the social network will build additional mobile capabilities into LiveRail next year. While he did not specify what these enhancements would be, we at ClickZ are looking forward to seeing how many more companies jump on the LiveRail bandwagon to deliver video ads across devices in 2015.