Digest: Bountiful Cow launches tool for “brand unsafe” inventory

In today's ExchangeWire Digest: Bountiful Cow launches tool for “brand unsafe” inventory; Sky losses double to £224m; and IPG unifies data efforts.

Independent media agency Bountiful Cow has announced the launch of a programmatic tool designed to buy quality inventory previously classified as brand unsafe. The tool, “Relative Advantage: Unblocked”, was developed in partnership with publisher alliance Ozone, and was built to solve for occurrences where brand safety technology penalises quality publishers by overzealously blocking their content.

UK media and telecoms company Sky has reported an annual operating loss of £224m for 2023, over double that of the £111m loss the firm reported the previous year. While revenue remained flat at £10.23bn, Comcast-owned Sky was impeded by declining popularity of its Q box device as customers continue to transition to streaming and smart TVs, as well as a £327m impairment attributable to SkyShowtime, its joint venture streaming service with Paramount. Despite a “market squeeze driven by the cost of living crisis”, advertising revenue fell by just £70m to £1.2bn.

Finally, agency holding company Interpublic Group (IPG) has launched a data platform, Interact, which unifies its identity resolution capabilities across its portfolio, which includes agencies Kinesso and UM, and technology unit Acxiom. The move continues the prevailing trend of data consolidation within agency holding groups, where previously siloed technology efforts are now being aligned across holding groups.