Dive Brief:
- IBM bought all of The Weather Company’s digital and data assets, but the Weather Channel TV portion remains under private equity firms Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group, and also under NBC Universal.
- Even though The Weather Company’s digital and TV are now split, marketers can still buy ads across all channels according to the company’s global head of sales.
- There are plans to eventually split ad buying between digital and TV and add differentiating tools into the mix.
Dive Insight:
Jeremy Steinberg, global head of sales, The Weather Company, will handle ad sales for IBM’s new acquisition and told Ad Age, "For the foreseeable future, it will be business as usual. We will work as partners to bring solutions to advertisers,” while explaining that marketers will still be able to buy ads across the TV and digital channels. Alicia Muntzner, head of as sales, will handle ad sales for the Weather Channel TV portion.
The Weather Company has restructured its ads sales team over the past year with an eye on data and improved targeting. Additionally, IBM expects to use its WeatherFX tool to sell data-driven ads based on weather and location data with a layer of deeper analytics that uses the data to help marketers take advantage of known consumer behavior around weather events.
Steinberg told Ad Age The Weather Company under IBM will be able to build out tools for marketers to leverage weather and location data, and it will license the data tools back to the Weather Channel.
