When it comes to TV advertising, “local” has always been a messy, fragmented landscape. National brands typically rely on expensive, one-size-fits-all buys, while local campaigns require stitching together countless broadcast, cable, and streaming deals. Locality—the company best known for wrangling that chaos—thinks it has the fix.
This week, the company unveiled Collective, a first-of-its-kind technology platform that lets advertisers plan, buy, and optimize local broadcast, cable, and streaming inventory in one place. Think of it as a universal remote for local video, only smarter—and built to scale nationally.
One Platform, Every Screen
At its core, Collective brings together every broadcast station, every cable household, and more than 150 streaming partners across all 210 U.S. markets. It’s fully self-service, powered by Deben’s media planning and optimization tech, and layered with Locality’s proprietary audience and media data stack.
For advertisers, that means the ability to reach audiences wherever they watch—linear TV, cable, or streaming—without juggling multiple systems. As Brian Morse, Locality’s head of Collective, put it: “Planners and buyers can roll up premium local linear and streaming video into a national, data-driven, audience-first solution.”
Automation Meets Audience Precision
The platform’s pitch is simple: automation + data = smarter TV buys. Instead of manually piecing together local schedules, marketers can define audiences by location, behavior, or intent and let Collective’s engine optimize budgets across markets.
A pilot with a national big-box retailer underscores the value: with only 5% of the campaign budget, Collective delivered 17% of overall reach by identifying and investing in 58 underserved markets. That’s the kind of ROI that will grab CMOs’ attention in a tightening ad economy.
Why This Matters Now
The launch comes at a pivotal moment. Local TV advertising has long been overshadowed by national campaigns and increasingly by streaming giants. Yet, the local market remains critical for reaching fragmented audiences. Platforms like Collective could be the bridge between the scale of national campaigns and the precision of local targeting.
Rivals such as Comcast’s Effectv and Disney’s Hulu Ad Manager have also pushed toward unifying linear and streaming, but Locality is betting that its all-in-one national-local approach—with Deben’s optimization baked in—sets it apart.
The Bottom Line
Collective isn’t just another DSP bolted onto TV inventory. It’s an attempt to reframe local advertising as a national strategy with local precision, shifting how brands think about video buying. If it works as advertised, it could force agencies and rivals alike to rethink their workflows.
For now, campaigns are already running through Collective, with more in the pipeline. The next question: how quickly big brands—and their media buyers—are willing to trust a platform that promises to do what’s historically been the most painful part of TV planning: make local simple.
