Omnicom Media and Rembrand Team Up to Scale In-Content Ads on Streaming

What the partnership offers

Omnicom Media, an Omnicom (NYSE: OMC) Connected Capability, will give its Content Collective, the group's branded content center of excellence, first-mover access to Rembrand's AI-powered VISTA platform. According to the release, VISTA scans publisher content to identify scenes that can be monetized through the insertion of in-content advertising.

The capability also draws on Acxiom RealID and direct integrations with major streamers. Brands can use these to find the content most relevant to a given audience, then pair that with VISTA to locate and activate opportunities across participating streaming partners.

The companies say in-content advertising has historically been managed through bespoke partnerships and individual content integrations. The new capability puts those opportunities into a common planning framework. Media teams get visibility across participating publishers, and in-content placements can be considered alongside broader media investments.

How it works

The capability connects four stages, according to Omnicom Media:

• Audience matching: Acxiom audience segments are matched with streaming viewership data to identify shows, movies and genres that best index with a target audience.
• Inventory mapping: Relevant programming is matched against in-content advertising opportunities available through VISTA.
• Inventory expansion: Additional content can be onboarded through established processes with participating streaming partners when relevant opportunities are not yet available.
• Activation: Brands deploy in-content placements against selected audiences and programming across participating publishers.

The release gives several examples. An automaker could place a new model in relevant programming across a streamer, using Acxiom in-market auto segments to reach shoppers who routinely avoid traditional ads. A beverage brand could appear in top-indexing summer programming during key seasonal purchase periods. Retail brands could use in-content placements to connect exposure to the path to purchase.

The research behind it

Omnicom Media points to its recent research, From Tuned Out to Leaned In: How to Combat Ad Avoidance, which found that 65% of U.S. consumers avoid advertising to some degree, whether by skipping, scrolling, muting or ignoring ads. The company says people increasingly use subscriptions, apps, AI and other tools to control their media experiences, so brands need ways to reach them without creating another interruption.

A separate study was commissioned from Omnicom Media's Partner Intelligence team in collaboration with Rembrand. It evaluated in-content advertising and found that, when paired with traditional video ads, perceptions of premium content amplify the performance of in-content ads. According to the release, this drove a 5.5 times impact on message recall and a 4x increase in both purchase intent and perceptions of the brand as premium. Because Rembrand collaborated on the study, these figures come from a party with an interest in the product.

What executives and clients say

Megan Pagliuca, Chief Product Officer at Omnicom Media, said the research "identified how quickly consumers actively or passively disengage when advertising feels intrusive or overly repetitive." She described the new approach as a "first of its kind data driven, scalable approach to in-content advertising," complementing earlier streaming capabilities aimed at negative reach, relevance and measurability.

John Sedlak, Chief Revenue Officer at Rembrand, said the collaboration "makes those opportunities easier to identify, plan and activate across premium streaming, bringing a new level of scale and consistency to the category."

Jillian Davis, Director of Marketing Technology at Cox Automotive, the parent company of Auto Trader and Kelley Blue Book, was cited as summing up the response from briefed clients: "We're always eager to leverage new, scalable and organic ways to reach our customers within premium content."

What it means for advertisers

For brands and media buyers, the main change is process. In-content placements, long arranged one deal at a time, can now be searched and planned using audience data and viewed across participating publishers. The release does not name the streaming partners, give pricing or state when the capability will be broadly available, so the scale of inventory remains to be seen.