Comcast Buys Visible World, Expands Addressable TV Advertising

The largest U.S. cable operator, Comcast Corp., continues to acquired advanced advertising technology companies -- now with the purchase of Visible World.

Visible World has been one of the bigger platforms and proponents of addressable TV advertising. The technology-based company has worked with more than 300 advertisers, reaching approximately 80% of U.S. cable homes with an addressable footprint of 3 million homes.

Terms of the Comcast-Visible World agreement were not disclosed.

Visible also owns AudienceXpress, a programmatic TV, audience buying platform for advertisers, which started up in 2013. Visible World’s investors include WPP Group, Viacom, Time Warner Investments, Comcast Ventures, among others.

Seth Haberman, founder/chief executive officer of Visible World, said: “Our mission has always been to develop innovative, industry leading technology that makes TV advertising more efficient and effective... I am thrilled to announce that we have found the perfect partner to help us achieve our goals and help us take our business and services to the next level.”

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John Schanz, EVP/chief network officer for Comcast Cable, said: “This partnership reflects the business and technology trends we are seeing in the television industry today.”

In March 2014, Comcast bought FreeWheel for $360 million. Freewheel provides digital advertising insertion for online and video-on-demand programming for major TV content providers, including 21st Century Fox, Viacom, Dish Network, DirecTV, Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Discovery Communications, Univision Communications, Amazon.com, Turner Broadcasting and AT&T.

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