Introduction

Future Today's advertising video-on-demand platform (AVOD) contains a portfolio of hundreds of owned & operated CTV channels including Fawesome, The LEGO Channel, FilmRise, iFood, WatchFreeFlix, EncourageTV, BratTV, and HappyKids, all free to the consumer.  

HappyKids is the #1 AVOD kids and family-themed channel in the streaming landscape, delivering over 60,000 movies, TV shows, and videos from the most popular and established children’s programming brands, including Cocomelon, Blippi, Mattel, Hasbro, KidCity, and more. 

Future Today's catalog of long-form content, from premium to independent, includes exclusive, first-run movies and TV shows spanning all genres and categories.  The Future Today portfolio of channels is available on all major OTT platforms including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Comcast Xfinity, XUMO, Samsung, LG, Vizio, and more. Future Today reaches over 50 million households through 300+ channels that house a massive catalog of 275k+ film, television, and digital content assets from 350+ content partners. 

Challenge

CTV presents challenges for buyers as the fragmented and complex CTV supply chain makes it difficult to buy media, reach viewers at scale, and target them effectively. Future Today wanted to maximize the value of the inventory by providing advertisers with greater transparency to target their premium and diverse CTV inventory. 

Solution

Future Today integrated with IRIS.TV and allowed the entire video library to be ingested and assigned an IRIS_ID. IRIS.TV sent normalized video-level data to be analyzed frame-by-frame by their data partners’ industry-leading solutions, which utilize AI to create contextual, emotional, and brand-suitable data segments. This data was then assigned to each video’s IRIS_ID, making the data available to Future Today’s SSP partners.

Through IRIS.TV’s integration with SpringServe, Future Today leveraged this data for its own direct and programmatic deals. In addition, Future Today utilized IRIS.TV’s segment forecasting tool to better classify and catalog available inventory by contextual segment, enabling its sales team to create strategic inventory packages.

Results

Brands like Carl’s Jr. and their agencies, like PMG, are targeting CTV with IRIS-enabled PMPs because they are driving not only brand lift but also incremental lift for in-store visits and sales. 

Maximizing Yield Across Supply

By having all videos in their library assigned an IRIS_ID, Future Today is increasing its share of targeted impressions in IRIS-enabled private marketplace deals. By enabling advertisers to reach the right viewers at the right moment at scale, Future Today is maximizing yield from their IRIS-enabled data including top video-level contextual segments:

• Travel

• Sports

• Food & Drink

• Arts & Entertainment

• Shopping 

• Style & Fashion

They have seen six-figure quarterly revenue increases and a 20% higher eCPM compared to their average.

Transforming Passive Income into Direct Sales

After increasing revenue from IRIS-enabled PMP deals, Future Today began leveraging insight from these deals to target their direct video-level contextual ad campaigns in Springserve.  

“Our integration with IRIS.TV has been a game changer, enabling us to maximize the value of our world-class premium content and empowering our team with the tools to create new revenue streams and drive higher yields,” said Vikrant Mathur, CEO, Future Today. “With IRIS-enabled contextual intelligence, we are thrilled that we can create better viewing experiences for viewers while providing advertisers with a greater ability to reach their target audiences in the moments that matter.”