• by Wayne Friedman , Yesterday

The announcement that it would be splitting Comcast Corp. into two companies -- Comcast Corp. and NBCUniversal -- puts the focus more on the changing marketplace and long-time advertising synergy issues at the company, according to one analyst.

“Even seemingly obvious synergies were never fully realized at Comcast despite being combined for more than 15 years,” says Brian Wieser, media analyst of Madison & Wall.

He notes that “local TV station sales at NBC’s O&Os are still separate from Comcast’s local cable sales despite often serving the same customers. This is arguably why few countries have significant distributors and media packagers with common ownership.”

A bigger question comes with regard to global ad-technology company Freewheel. Some analysts believe that being part of the same company with NBCUniversal fostered more investment from Comcast. Now, there is question of a plan going forward.

Looking at the big picture for Freewheel, Wieser says: “As one of the largest global ad-tech businesses, it is somewhat unusual sitting within a geographically constrained distributor of internet access and content.”

Wieser says Comcast/NBCUniversal faces increasingly global competition for competitors such as Netflix, Amazon Apple, and YouTube.

“To the extent Freewheel would not have a natural internal partner going forward, perhaps the strategic and financial logic for an eventual separation of that business might become more evident.”