Thirdpresence acquires Stockholm-based Flowplayer to create a better video advertising platform with machine learning

In today’s digital video advertising landscape, problems such as fraud, brand safety, and viewability are still a concern for brands and advertisers. Video fraud also has a knock-on effect for premium publishers and monetization, as the value of their inventory is diverted away from them. Thirdpresence is a startup that creates the best in-app brand environment and user experience for video advertising.

Today, Thirdpresence announced it has acquired Stockholm-based video platform startup Flowplayer to develop a unified contextual video and advertising offering that helps advertisers achieve their branding objectives and improve the ability for premium publishers to monetize their content. The newly combined company will operate under the Flowplayer brand name and will be led by former Thirdpresence CEO Valtteri Pukander. A visit to Thirdpresence website now redirects users to Flowplayer.com

Founded in 2007 by Anssi Lindqvist and Markus Bäckström, the Helsinki, Finland-based Thirdpresence creates the best in-app brand environment and user experience for video advertising. Match your branding objectives with a large-scale video audience and get results. It offers AI-powered programmatic video advertising with industry-leading MOAT viewability rates in brand advertising. Thirdpresence has also developed a video advertising solution which solves these industry problems by applying proprietary artificial intelligence. Advertisers can match their branding objectives with large-scale video audiences in a safe and result-driven environment, while premium video publishers receive ad rates they deserve. The company holds the IAB UK Gold Standard, and their inventory is certified by key industry advertising groups such as TAG and MOAT, with billions of video advertising transactions taking place every day.

Acquiring Flowplayer’s video platform means that data which originates from the video player can be directly observed to deliver ads which benefit both parties and provide the best video experience possible for viewers.

“By applying contextual data analysis driven directly from the video player, we want to create the right video engagement metrics that give a true and meaningful overview for content owners. The combined solution uses newly created metadata directly from the video to improve the viewing experience through better video recommendations and advertisements,” says Valtteri Pukander. “Importantly, our purpose-built algorithms also help advertisers to reduce ad waste,” continues Pukander.

Used by publishers such as HBO, Universal, Televisa, and Disney, Flowplayer’s powerful yet lightweight video platform allows publishers to seamlessly implement video technology into their own environments and generate video insights and revenue in line with their business models.

“We are excited to join together and continue our quest to build the best video experience for audiences. We will now accelerate our offering in video analytics and intelligence so that publishers will enjoy better opportunities to generate revenue from their content,” adds Emanuel Viklund, CTO and former CEO of Flowplayer. “One of many examples is how ads are optimally placed within video content automatically and safely,” concludes Viklund.

In 2018, Flowplayer was recognized as the fastest growing audio, video, and media technology by SimilarWeb, growing its user base by 276%. Flowplayer has offices in Stockholm, Helsinki, New York, and London.