Telenet and Proximus are expanding their partnership in the advertising market to form a new joint venture with publisher Mediahuis. The companies plan to create a national advertising sales house offering inventory across their properties, including the SBS TV channels owned by Telenet, websites of the public broadcaster VRT served by Telenet's Pebble Media, Mediahuis's newspapers, and the many websites served by Proximus's Skynet Advertising.
Mediahuis and Telenet/SBS will each have a 44.4 percent stake in the joint venture and Proximus/Skynet 11.2 percent. The commercial teams of Mediahuis, SBS and Pebble Media will staff the sales house, which is expected to become operational in early 2021.
The brand portfolio of the new sales house "guarantees a large and qualitative reach", with the properties viewed by over 75 percent of Flemish people and more than 25 percent of the French-speaking population, Telenet said. The brands covered include, among others, Vier, Vijf, Zes, BBC First, Play Sports and Njam! (Telenet/SBS); De Standaard, Het Nieuwsblad/De Gentenaar, Gazet van Antwerpen, Het Belang van Limburg, ATV, TVL, TVO and ROBtv (Mediahuis); één.be, sporza.be, stubru.be, LinkedIn, Spotify, Snapchat, Aufeminin.com (Pebble Media); and Dailymotion, Verizon, Microsoft, Vroom, Autosalon and Voetbalkrant/Walfoot (Skynet).
The cross-media offer of the new agency will consist of television, video, audio, print, online display, native and branded content. In addition to ad inventory, the partners plan to offer customised data solutions to help advertisers reach their target markets.
As part of the plans, Telenet is buying out partner Var in Pebble Media. Var is the ad agency of the VRT, and the company said it wants to remain free to work with other partners as well. Pebble Media has handled its online advertising for over ten years and will continue to do so under the current contract, Var said.
