Thirdpresence, a Swedish programmatic video advertising company, has acquired video platform Flowplayer, to create an AI-powered offering that will help prevent fraud, ensure brand safety and increase viewability. The new company will adopt the Flowpayer title and will be led by former Thirdpresence CEO Valterri Pukander.

Thirdpresence, an IAB UK Gold Standard company, provides a video advertising solution which uses artificial intelligence to solve the most common problems in the digital advertising field. This machine learning technology allows advertisers to meet their brand objectives while reaching a wider audience in a secure environment. At the same time, premium video publishers can still receive higher ad rates.

Flowplayer plans to implement Thirdpresence’s machine learning capabilities to help advertisers avoid both video ad fraud and the “knock-off” effect that comes with it. Fraud triggers a loss of revenue since the value of an advertisers inventory is significantly decreased. 

Currently, Flowplayer is already being used by Universal, HBO, Disney, and Televisa. The lightweight video platform was also named SimilarWeb’s fastest growing audio, video, and media technology of 2018, prompting Flowplayer’s user base to increase by 276 per cent.

“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,CEO of Thirdpresence. “Importantly, our purpose-built algorithms also help advertisers to reduce ad waste,” continues Pukander.

“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,” said Emanuel Viklund, CTO and former CEO of Flowplayer.

“One of many examples is how ads are optimally placed within video content automatically and safely,” said Viklund.