Sky Invests in U.S. Ad Technology Firm

LONDON: Sky has invested $5 million in the U.S. advertising technology firm Sharethrough.

Sharethrough offers software that enables publishers to monetize their sites and apps with adverts that are non-interruptive and stylistically similar to the surrounding content. For advertisers, Sharethrough’s software provides them with an automated solution to match online ad campaigns to the webpages they are hosted on.

Through the partnership, Sky’s advertising sales house, Sky Media, will offer its clients access to Sharethrough’s native advertising software. This further expands the options available to advertisers running campaigns across Sky’s range of online sites and mobile apps. Additionally, Sky will itself benefit from adopting native advertising to market its growing portfolio of products and services, including Sky TV, Sky Broadband and NOW TV.

Emma Lloyd, the director of business development at Sky, commented: "This new partnership continues the work we’re doing to harness exciting technological developments and integrate them into our business. We’re pleased to be deepening our relationship with Sharethrough and look forward to building new links with other startups and tech entrepreneurs in the U.S. and Europe."

Jamie West, the deputy managing director of Sky Media, added: "This investment in Sharethrough builds on our leadership in advertising innovation which we’ve already established with Sky AdSmart, enabling us to offer even more options to advertisers on Sky."

Dan Greenberg, the founder and CEO of Sharethrough, added: "Partnering with Sky is our latest step in advancing Sharethrough’s vision to help publishers around the world find new revenue streams across all platforms, especially mobile. There is already a rapid shift towards native, in-feed monetization as a key revenue driver for all publishers in all markets. Our industry-leading software will enable publishers and their brand clients to deliver content programs at scale.”