Stanford Media & DHS Group Announce Strategic Partnership to Offer OTT Management

DHS Group, a private equity and joint venture firm within its division that focuses on the measurement platform for OTT advertising, and Stanford Media, the full-service performance marketing and creative agency, today announced a new strategic partnership to offer brands a new suite of CTV media buying, management, and measurement.

Under the arrangement, Stanford Media team will offer CTV and OTT media buying and management. At the same time, DHS will provide the measurement and analytics to optimize the performance of video advertising campaigns. The first client under this new arrangement is a StanfordMedia client that is a leading residential customer-response energy program, which had been doing Facebook media spend and now wanted to extend their media buying to include CTV and OTT.

The rise in ad-supported streaming services has been heating up. In March 2021, Showtime announced that its Showtime+ would begin to offer a cheaper, ad-supported tier in June. Additionally, a recent Deloitte report showed that more people are using streaming video services than ever before. The average U.S. customer has four different streaming services subscriptions on average, and around 80% of households having at least one subscription. Further, an eMarketer report estimated that CTV investments in the U.S. grew by 41% year over year in 2020 to more than $9 billion. The same eMarketer report forecasts that growth will accelerate this year as spending reaches $13.41 billion.

“Our clients have been asking us to find scalable, cost effective, and measurable alternatives to traditional digital media and now we’re able to do so in Connected TV with our new partnership with DHS,” said Bill Kingword, CEO and Co-Founder, Stanford Media. “At Stanford, we’ve built a great track record in performance marketing by being able to help clients scale through Facebook and Google. And given the rise in new streaming subscription services, we’re proud to now offer CTV media management, along with the measurement that DHS is providing.”

“Brands want to invest in Stanford and they’re looking for the right partners to help them buy, measure, optimize, and scale their CTV budgets. Our partnership with Stanford unlocks the best in breed of buying, measurement, and analytics,” said Fernando Aguirre, Executive Vice Chairman. “At DHS, we’ve developed and perfected CTV measurement for marketers. By offering a simple, digital first measurement solution, we’re able to help marketers leverage CTV the same way they leverage digital advertising.”