Channel 4 invests in European ad sales joint venture

Channel 4 has invested in the new digital ad sales partnership established by ProSiebenSat.1 in Germany, TF1 in France and Mediaset in Italy and Spain.

Channel 4 becomes an exclusive UK partner to the European Broadcaster Exchange (EBX) and takes a 25% stake in the new business along with each of the other three broadcasters.

The newly created digital ad sales venture is expected to start trading in early 2018 and will be headquartered in London.

EBX aims to establish a European video-on-demand exchange to cater for the growing demand for multi-territory video campaigns at scale, initially traded programmatically.

It aims to forge deeper collaboration between the broadcaster partners, driving forward technological development in online advertising and helping them to compete more efficiently with global competitors like Google and Facebook.

Channel 4 said that its involvement in the project will allow it to enter the pan-European digital ad sales market for the first time.

Each of the partner broadcasters will be able to tap into digital revenues from adjacent ad markets by making available additional inventory on their broadcaster on-demand platforms.

In time EBX said it aims to involve other European media companies and make their advertising inventories available, establishing an open model with its partners.

“The demand for multi-territory digital ad campaigns in brand safe and transparent environments is increasing as the programmatic video ad market continues to grow exponentially across Europe,” said Jonathan Lewis, head of Digital & Partnership Innovation at Channel 4.

“Our investment allows Channel 4 to cater for this demand exclusively in the UK market and forge closer strategic and commercially successful partnerships with key broadcasters in European markets which will in turn generate new digital revenues for Channel 4 to reinvest back into the UK creative sector.”

ProSiebenSat.1, TF1 Group and Mediaset announced the establishment of EBX in June.