Press: Crackle Joins the IRIS.TV Contextual Video Marketplace

Top Streaming Video Service to Provide CTV Inventory for IRIS.TV’s Rapidly Growing Marketplace

IRIS.TV, the leading video intelligence company, today announced the introduction of Crackle, a free AVOD service of Crackle Plus, a Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment (Nasdaq: CSSE) company and one of the largest operators of streaming advertising-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) networks, to the company’s Contextual Video Marketplace. With this integration, Crackle’s vast array of streaming CTV content will be contextually segmented by a growing list of leading data providers including Oracle Data Cloud, Comscore, GumGum, Zefr and Spectrum Media Services, with all segmentation enabled by the IRIS.TV platform. This will provide marketers with more transparency into the CTV inventory they are purchasing, allowing them to contextually target Crackle’s coveted CTV audiences in a privacy-first and brand-suitable way.

Crackle linear and VOD networks are available in the U.S. and can be accessed on up to 29 devices and services including Amazon FireTV, RokuTV, Apple TV, Smart TVs (Samsung, LG, VIZIO), gaming consoles (PS4 and Xbox One), Plex, iOS and Android mobile devices and on desktops at Crackle.com. Crackle is also available in approximately 500,000 hotel rooms in the Marriott Bonvoy chain. IRIS.TV will enable contextual intelligence targeting data across all of this programming.

IRIS.TV’s contextual video marketplace simplifies the complexity and fragmentation of the video ecosystem across CTV and premium digital video by enabling video-level contextual and brand-safety analysis. Before IRIS.TV, contextual and brand-safety data for videos was only available by analyzing the text on a web-page. Now, for the first time, marketers have the transparency to confidently buy CTV and premium video inventory based on video-level contextual and brand-safety analysis and the topical nature of every video. 

“We are thrilled to welcome Crackle into our expanding list of premium CTV publisher partners. They clearly recognize the importance of contextual-based brand-safe targeting and its role fueling the ongoing growth of CTV,” said Richie Hyden, Co-Founder and COO, IRIS.TV. “We look forward to enabling access to the Crackle video library through our expanding list of data partners and making their contextually identified inventory available to advertisers via all programmatic execution channels.”

“Crackle believes that transparency is essential for Connected TV and a requirement for premium Connected TV programmers,” said Tim Ware, Executive Director of Programmatic at Crackle Plus. “Working with IRIS.TV guarantees and reinforces the virtues of Crackle’s brand-safe environments, allowing our advertisers to seamlessly buy our inventory using third-party verified contextual and brand safety data, all of which will now be enabled through the IRIS.TV Contextual Video Marketplace. This will further allow our brand marketing partners to simply and confidently shift their linear TV budgets to Crackle’s AVOD and Live Streaming OTT inventory.”

The IRIS.TV Contextual Video Marketplace unites thousands of potential integrations into a single ecosystem bringing together publishers, contextual data partners, ad servers, and SSPs into a marketplace that allows publishers’ video content to be analyzed and categorized into industry-accepted brand-safe and brand-suitable segments that can be purchased by marketers through any DSP via direct, private marketplace, and open auction buying.

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CRACKLE PLUS, A CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY

Crackle Plus owns and operates ad-supported VOD networks Crackle and Popcornflix and garners 50 million streams of its movies and TV shows per month, making it one of the largest AVOD streaming platforms in the U.S. Crackle Plus has over 80,000 hours of content available across all its networks, and premieres at least one original and one exclusive program each month, differentiating it from other AVODs. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, Inc. (Nasdaq: CSSE) owns a majority stake in the company formed with Sony Pictures Television. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment also acquires and distributes video content through its Screen Media subsidiary and produces original long and short-form content through Landmark Studio Group, its Chicken Soup for the Soul Originals division and APlus.com. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment is a subsidiary of Chicken Soup for the Soul, LLC, which publishes the famous book series and produces super-premium pet food under the Chicken Soup for the Soul brand name.

About IRIS.TV

IRIS.TV  is a video intelligence company founded in 2013. Our mission is to connect and unify video data from any source to power better consumer experiences and business outcomes. Our privacy-first, neutral video data platform provides the leading media, data, and advertising technology companies with seamless on-boarding of video data and activates the data for analysis. We enable partners to build scalable solutions including contextual and brand-safe ad targeting and verification capabilities, personalized video recommendations, and measurement and analytics solutions. For more information, please visit IRIS.TV.