AT&T Launches Xandr, Signs Altice USA & Frontier to New Ad Unit

NEW YORK -- AT&T announced today the launch of XandrS its new advertising company led by CEO Brian Lesser. The announcement was made at the Relevance Conference, Xandr’s inaugural conference in Santa Barbara, California.

Xandr encompasses all aspects of the existing AT&T advertising & analytics businesses, including AT&T’s advanced TV business, AT&T AdWorks; AT&T’s data and analytics business; ATT.net and AppNexus, which will continue to support its US and global customers under the Xandr umbrella.

This new kind of advertising company has four key advantages, which include data, premium content, advanced advertising technology and AT&T’s distribution to more than 170 million direct-to-consumer relationships across wireless, video and broadband.

To further strengthen its leadership in advanced TV advertising, Xandr has entered into agreements with Altice USA and Frontier Communications to aggregate and sell their national addressable TV advertising inventory. This initial step starts to create the foundation of a national TV marketplace for advertisers and premium content publishers. Xandr will also collaborate with a4, Altice USA’s advanced advertising business, to help expand a4’s nationwide addressable digital advertising capabilities.

By aggregating this video inventory from multiple multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), AT&T’s addressable TV offering starts to provide advertisers with a one-stop shop. This allows marketers to reach the audiences they want to connect with most, while improving yield by helping inventory owners compete more effectively.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T)