Late last week, video ad management platform Beachfront and XITE announced a collaboration in which Beachfront is powering XITE’s VOD ad inventory on IP-enabled set-top boxes. XITE is a Netherlands-founded music video service that reaches 100 million households in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Ben Abbatiello, Beachfront’s VP of Advanced TV explained in an interview that a critical role that the company is playing is empowering XITE with more granular, IPv6-based audience targeting on set-top boxes, an improvement vs. the single home IP address format of IPv4. Beachfront has been investing in cross-screen addressability that bridges STB and connected TV inventory. IPv6 will become more essential for enhanced targeting as consumers add multiple viewing devices in their homes.

Ben said an important part of Beachfront’s strategy is helping pay-TV operators create STB monetization opportunities for themselves and content providers. Ben said there’s urgency because both parties are witnessing under-monetized VOD usage and an inability to seamlessly tap programmatic demand for VOD inventory. It was recently disclosed that Beachfront is supporting mid-sized operator Frontier Communications.

Beyond playing this “translator” role between IP protocols, Beachfront is also providing other ad management functionality like decisioning, encoding and delivery.  Ben cited Beachfront’s role as an independent technology platform as being advantageous for both sides of the market (Beachfront has been majority-owned by private equity firms since December, 2017).  

(Note: Beachfront is a VideoNuze sponsor)