The Weather Company Extends Access to WEATHERfx Platform Off-Property; Empowering Marketers to Improve Personalized Marketing

NEW YORK, Dec. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Weather Company, an IBM Business (NYSE: IBM), announced today it is expanding off-property access to its proprietary automated ad targeting platform, WEATHERfx, and further extending the capability beyond The Weather Channel and Weather Underground web and mobile properties.

As part of this WEATHERfx expansion, Weather has collaborated with The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD), a global self-service technology platform for buyers of advertising, and Vistar Media, the industry's first and only solution for programmatic out-of-home advertising. Through The Trade Desk and Vistar Media, marketers will be able to leverage WEATHERfx targeting across a variety of programmatic campaigns. Both programmatic and digital OOH advertising are promising growth markets, with programmatic ad spending expected to grow at double-digit rates for the next several years, and digital placements forecasted to account for more than half of OOH ad spending by 2018. (Source:eMarketer, eMarketer).

WEATHERfx is an automated targeting platform that helps power more informed marketing decisions by leveraging weather's potential impact on emotion and delivering messaging designed to inform consumer action. Using weather-based triggers that identify conditions when weather is most likely to drive consumer behavior, the automated WEATHERfx platform eliminates media waste and activates a brand's media to run when the optimal mix of conditions occur.

"As the digital advertising ecosystem continues to grow and transform, it's more important than ever for marketers to manage their campaigns across all channels in a more holistic manner," said Jeremy Steinberg, Global Head of Sales, The Weather Company. "By expanding the availability of our WEATHERfx platform off-property with The Trade Desk and Vistar Media, marketers will be able to apply our proven and successful WEATHERfx targeting to a much larger portion of their overall media and marketing, and make their overall campaigns more targeted and relevant based on local weather conditions. This marks the continued evolution of The Weather Company's innovative ad solutions as they grow and scale beyond our properties."

"The Trade Desk's collaboration with The Weather Company enables advertisers to achieve a more granular level of decisioning, resulting in even more dynamic and contextually relevant ads," said David Danziger, VP of Enterprise Partnerships at The Trade Desk. "Our customers are able to use this additional layer of WEATHERfx data to better target consumers across their whole campaign, from mobile to connected TV, native to display and everything in between."

"Collaborating with The Weather Channel to extend WEATHERfx data targeting to out-of-home was a natural fit," said Michael Provenzano, CEO & Co-Founder at Vistar Media. "Vistar's platform is uniquely built to respond to data sets involving location and time – like weather conditions – to help marketers connect with on-the-go consumers at the right place and right time with relevant messaging."

In addition to improving the relevancy of programmatic advertising campaigns via The Trade Desk and Vistar Media, WEATHERfx can also be used off-platform to help marketers better target messaging across social media, email marketing, and on marketers' owned and operated websites or mobile apps.

ABOUT THE WEATHER COMPANY
The Weather Company, an IBM Business, is the world's largest private weather enterprise, helping people make informed decisions – and take action – in the face of weather. The company offers the most accurate, personalized and actionable weather data and insights to millions of consumers and thousands of businesses via Weather's API, its business solutions division, and its own digital products from The Weather Channel (weather.com) and Weather Underground (wunderground.com). The company delivers up to 26 billion forecasts daily for 2.2 billion locations.

Weather's portfolio includes award-winning products such as the fourth most-downloaded app and a top weather app on all major mobile platforms globally; the world's largest network of personal weather stations; a top-20 U.S. website; the seventh most data-rich site in the world; one of the world's largest IoT data platforms; and industry-leading business solutions.

Weather Means Business™. The world's biggest brands in aviation, energy, insurance, media, and government rely on The Weather Company for data, technology platforms and services to help improve decision-making and respond to weather's impact on business. For more, visit theweathercompany.com.

ABOUT THE TRADE DESK
The Trade Desk (Nasdaq: TTD) is a technology company that empowers buyers of advertising. Through its self-service, cloud-based platform, ad buyers can create, manage, and optimize more expressive data-driven digital advertising campaigns across ad formats, including display, video, audio, native and social, on a multitude of devices, including computers, mobile devices, and connected TV. Integrations with major data, inventory, and publisher partners ensure maximum reach and decisioning capabilities, and enterprise APIs enable custom development on top of the platform. Headquartered in Ventura, CA, The Trade Desk has offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia.

ABOUT VISTAR MEDIA
Vistar Media is a geospatial technology company bridging the space between advertising ecosystems and consumer movement patterns. Founded in 2012, Vistar created the first and only universal marketplace for out-of-home media, building a programmatic platform that has been widely adopted by buyers and sellers. Vistar provides marketers with unprecedented access to consumers at the right place and right time, through a data agnostic system for analyzing consumer movement patterns and activating cross-screen mobile and out-of-home media. For more information, visit www.vistarmedia.com.

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SOURCE The Weather Company, an IBM Business