Comcast Close to Acquire FreeWheel for $320 Million

Comcast Corp., is reportedly close to acquiring the Web video company FreeWheel Media Inc. for $320 million to expand in online video.

According to sources of the Wall Street Journal, just after it acquired the New York-based Time Warner Cable, Inc. for $45 billion, the biggest mass media and communications company in the world is making another one again with FreeWheel Media.

FreeWheel is an important provider of data to the continuously growing online video sector. It helps media companies deliver ads in Web video. The company's technology that are employed by the websites of the traditional television networks and online-only outlets guarantees that ads are viewed by their target population while considering significant variables including a user's location and recent viewing history.

In December 2013, it has joined comScore, an American Internet analytics company, in providing a better monitoring of online ratings for the Web content.

Among FreeWheel's clients are A+E, Crown Media, Discovery Communications, DirecTV, Dish, ESPN, Fox, Healthguru, NBC Universal, Revision3, Sky, Tuner, Univision, VEVO, and Warner Music Group.

Comcast, the largest home Internet service provider and cable company in the United States, is an advocate of an extensive effort to offer cable-TV subscribers access to cable programming online. Through its partnership with FreeWheel, it aims to create online video portals and applications to offer its cable-TV subscribers ways to stream TV programming on devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers.

Though some see the acquisition as a conflict of interest with some of FreeWheel's clients particularly with the satellite TV provider DirecTV, a competitor of Comcast and an investor in FreeWheel, some see it as an exit of Comcast to the video advertisement world.

Once the acquisition has been finalized, the sources said that FreeWheel will still function as a separated unit inside Comcast, and its management and employees will stay behind.