NCC Media Rebrands as Ampersand, With Announcement of New Audience-Based Ad Offerings and Programmer Enablement Solutions

New Name Reflects Company’s Mission of Connecting the TV Advertising Ecosystem Across All Screens, Inventory and Audiences

NCC Media, the data-driven TV advertising sales and technology company, unveiled the latest step in its ongoing evolution with the announcement that it is changing its name to Ampersand. The new name was developed to reflect the company’s mission of unifying the TV advertising ecosystem across all screens, inventory and audiences. In addition, the company is introducing the Ampersand name along with several new solutions for programmers and advertisers at this year’s Advertising Week Conference in New York, where it is hosting the “Future of TV Advertising” track today.

First, the company announced it has unified aggregated viewership data insights across the Charter, Comcast and Cox combined footprint of nearly 40 million households to support the design of rich audience-based planning and buying for the TV marketplace. Complementing traditional age/gender planning, reporting and measurement capabilities, this effort is the first TV ad platform to support a unified suite of solutions scaled across multiple MVPDs and all cable inventory. This capability allows marketers to plan, buy and optimize their TV investments against desired audience segments, such as Luxury Auto Intenders, or Homeowners with Household Income above $75,000.

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Second, building on the partnership it announced with OpenAP during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, advertisers who work with Ampersand’s Client Partnerships team, will be able to directly share audience definitions created in OpenAP with Ampersand for expression and use in local advanced advertising. This collaboration between Ampersand and OpenAP seeks to further promote consistent, standards-based approaches to data translations necessary for local and national investment groups, with the goal of making it easier for advertisers to use advanced capabilities across all TV inventory.

As an outgrowth of the above collaboration with OpenAP, and working in partnership with programmers and national agency investment teams, Ampersand is launching a National TV Extension (NTVX) platform to complement network TV buys by driving incremental reach and frequency against un/under-exposed brand audiences aggregated across Ampersand’s 85+ million represented cable household footprint. Ampersand’s ability to extend brand reach is supported by the same aggregated viewership data insights and reporting used by national/network TV sales teams, and as such provides a consistent and unified solution to brands across the TV marketplace.

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Lastly, Ampersand announced that moving forward it will serve as part of the central hub for network-enabled addressable, on behalf of Charter, Comcast, and Cox. Working in partnership with Canoe, Ampersand will provide TV programmers with a one-stop solution for enabling addressable capabilities on their national linear and VOD TV inventory. Ampersand will also offer programmers with several options for representing the sale of their addressable inventory, complementing linear/VOD/digital addressable solutions currently available across Ampersand’s MVPD footprint/inventory. This effort represents the first major milestone in support of the “On Addressability” initiative announced earlier this summer, which is focused on enabling and unifying addressable solutions across all TV inventory sources.

“Thirty years ago, NCC showed the TV world the power of working together, unifying the fragmented cable TV ad market within a single, open platform for the benefit of advertisers, agencies and MVPDs,” said Nicolle Pangis, CEO of Ampersand. “The Ampersand name and the new audience products represent both a nod to our past and our vision for a successful TV future in which the industry rallies around a shared approach for connecting brands to audiences across the entirety of the viewing experience.”

Today’s news builds on the company’s momentum over the past year in bringing increased performance and collaboration to the world of TV advertising.

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