• by Alex Weprin , September 5, 2018

The Fox-owned ad technology firm true[X] and the video application development platform You.i have teamed to expand their capabilities in the connected TV and over-the-top video space.

You.i’s specialty is building out connected TV, streaming video platforms and apps for its partners, then deploying them across key players in the connected TV ecosystem, such as Roku and Amazon’s Fire TV.

The company’s clients include Turner, Viacom, Fox, Disney and Sony, giving it a substantial presence in the television space.

With the true[X] partnership, the companies are hoping to leverage You.i’s widely adopted streaming platform and true[X]’s advertising technology to bolster the programmatic ad business of the streaming video applications.

These streaming video platforms are particularly important as traditional media companies explore new platforms to complement, supplement or replace their traditional sources of distribution.

“The future of those content streaming companies is CTV. That is fairly inarguable, whether CTV happens because Roku eventually takes over the space, or it happens because Samsung deploys its CTV experience across every screen, it doesn't really matter to us,” true[X] CTO Josh Rangsikitpho tells Digital News Daily.

“Eventually, everything will be done over IP, over internet. And in that world, we want to make sure that our suite of ad-tech products work very cohesively and can both add to the user experience,” he adds.

One of the biggest challenges in connected TV is the fragmentation of the marketplace.

Roku, Amazon’s Fire TV and Apple TV all have significant market share, but no one company dominates the field. In order for content companies to remain relevant, they need to be on main platforms. You.i has made a business of helping them deploy on all of them.

“It feels kind of like mobile did a decade ago, when there were a lot of different devices with a lot of different formats,” Rangsikitpho says. “Ideally, we build once using You.i Not only can it be deployed easily across devices, it has some of the most advanced rendering capabilities on those devices.”

For true[X], founded to develop interactive advertising for desktop and mobile devices, the deal with You.i also serves as a significant investment in connected TV, which is quickly becoming the place where long-form premium content is consumed.

“As we move into CTV, we want to figure out the right way to mesh those types of ad products with existing video ad products that are also very high performance, as well as new ones we're incubating,’ Rangsikitpho says. “We want to have full flexibility around the CTV canvas to experiment with the best user experiences and see which ones resonate — which ones work, and which don’t.”