Viacom Vantage and Velocity: Keys to Viacom’s Ad Portfolio

Viacom (VIAB) is optimistic about its advertising business in fiscal 2016 and expects its domestic advertising revenue to improve. The company’s two key advertising products, Viacom Vantage and Velocity, are the reasons for the optimism.

The company is also experimenting with a reduction in ad loads during prime time across some of its networks. Viacom stated at a Deutsche Bank (DB) investor conference earlier this month that as the company implements Viacom Velocity and Vantage products, ad loads are coming down during prime time programming.

According to the company, advertising products such as Viacom Velocity are “providing in-programming marketing opportunities with more events, more eventized programming, which is the advantage of having more original programming. You’re able to work with the advertising clients to get premium pricing, premium opportunities, and particularly when you marry that with our data capability, our targeting capabilities that we’re developing.”

Viacom Velocity helps advertisers design better marketing campaigns. The company has a proprietary tool, the Echo Social Graph, that “measures the effectiveness and virality of custom creative marketing campaigns.” Earlier this year, the Viacom Velocity team teamed up with Canvs to track emotionality across various social media platforms, including Twitter (TWTR) and Facebook (FB). The purpose was to provide “sentiment analysis.”

Viacom Vantage, the company’s data analytics platform, was unveiled last year. It offers advertisers campaign measurements and enhanced audience targeting. Viacom Echo, another data analytics platform, allows advertisers to reach targeted audiences through social media.

Viacom Vantage has been a success for the company. In its fiscal 2015 earnings call, Viacom stated that the platform was in high demand by advertisers. Many companies are acquiring ad technology companies. One example is 21st Century Fox’s (FOXA) acquisition of TrueX.

Viacom accounts for 0.08% of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY). If you’re interested in exposure to the computers sector, note that SPY has 3.9% exposure there.

In the next part of this series, we’ll explore how Viacom’s deal with Snapchat is working out for the company.