In Birmingham, Alabama, a national company had a new product to introduce and a familiar advertising problem. Its commercials could appear on broadcast television and streaming services without necessarily finding different people. Buying another impression was simple. Knowing whether it reached another household was the interesting part.
- Combines local broadcast and streaming buying across all 210 U.S. TV markets.
- Builds tools to plan campaigns, measure audience overlap and control repetition.
- Sells to agencies, brands and political campaigns, with people supporting the software.
01Two companies, one remote control
Locality was assembled for precisely this predicament. In June 2023, broadcast advertising business CoxReps and streaming specialist Gamut came together under one name. Their owner, One Equity Partners, had acquired both in September 2022. Ann Hailer led broadcast; Keith Kazerman led streaming. The organization inherited relationships on both sides of a television set whose delivery methods had multiplied.
The company occupies the space between advertisers and the places where commercials run. Agencies, national brands, regional chains, neighborhood businesses and political campaigns use it to buy local video audiences. Stations and streaming publishers gain a route to advertising demand. Locality supplies inventory access, campaign execution, targeting and measurement, with software increasingly coordinating the work.
Its footprint covers all 210 U.S. designated market areas, the television regions known as DMAs. The company reports relationships with more than 400 broadcast partners and 150 streaming publishers. Those figures describe access, rather than ownership of hundreds of stations. The distinction matters: Locality is organizing a marketplace that already exists.
02The household you already bought
The Birmingham campaign ran for six weeks during the second and third quarters of 2024. Locality’s published account calls the advertiser Brand X. The brief was to extend a product launch using locally targeted streaming, with automatic content recognition, or ACR, data helping measure exposure across television screens.
Locality reports 27% incremental reach relative to the brand’s exposure through national and local linear television and other streaming campaigns in that market. That is a claim about additional audience. It does not establish a 27% increase in purchases, profit or revenue. A media buyer who mistakes one for the other has skipped the most consequential line in the report.
The same case study identifies a repetition problem: on average, 40% of the brand’s linear-TV viewing households encountered ads within 2.5 minutes of each other. A commercial can be delivered exactly as ordered and still arrive absurdly soon after its previous appearance. Reach+ uses exposure data to help buyers examine overlap, adjust frequency and pursue households their existing plan misses.
Incremental reach reported by Locality for Brand X
03The plumbing gets a product name
The product names describe different jobs. Reach+ connects broadcast and streaming planning with cross-platform measurement. LocalX is the proprietary campaign platform, with planning, targeting, inventory and reporting tools. Audience Engine brings together identity, viewership and campaign data. Darwin handles broadcast planning and optimization. Collective, launched with Deben in September 2025, lets buyers approach local television at national scale.
The unglamorous details may tell you more than the names. LocalX 2.2, released in January 2026, combined customer relationship management, order management and inventory distribution functions. Its announcement described manual handoffs, disconnected systems and limited visibility as obstacles. Advanced geographic targeting is useful. So is having the sales team, ad operators and finance department working from a consistent order.
In March 2026, Locality announced it was acquiring Deben, bringing the planning technology behind its earlier collaboration into the business. Michael Collins, appointed the company’s first CEO in November 2025, had described local buying as siloed in a February interview. The acquisition fits that diagnosis: owning more of the planning machinery gives Locality more control over how the pieces connect.
“The current local ad buying system remains very siloed.”
Michael Collins / CEO, Locality
Cynopsis interview, February 2026
04Four days is a different business rhythm
The measurement side changed in April 2026. Locality and Nielsen announced an integration of Nielsen’s Media Data Engine, making demographic audience delivery data available within four days of airing across local markets. Previously, they said, that process took weeks. Feedback that arrives during a campaign can inform a decision while money is still being spent.
This is where Locality’s market position becomes clearer. Advertisers can buy directly from stations or publishers, work through agencies and programmatic tools, or choose competing multiscreen businesses such as Ampersand and Viamedia.ai. Locality’s proposition combines broadcast representation, streaming access, local knowledge and its own operating software. Buyers should compare the inventory and execution they need, alongside the dashboard.
The business is built around B2B media sales and advertising services. Its channel-partner offering adds private-label streaming capabilities, inventory and sales training for media companies. Technology supports those commercial relationships; the product descriptions alone do not make the whole company a subscription-software business. Human judgment still matters when a campaign involves creative choices, multiple markets and different delivery environments.
05Make the map earn its place
Locality’s careers page offers a pleasantly concrete example: snowblowers in Detroit, lawnmowers in Miami. The principle extends beyond weather. A national retailer can tailor a message to a particular store footprint; a regional chain can concentrate investment where it trades; a political campaign can organize around relevant local audiences. Geography earns its place when it changes the buying decision or the message.
Tom Wolfe, who joined as SVP of Programmatic Strategy and Partnerships in June 2026, has argued that shortening the route to inventory also requires preserving useful audience signals along the way. It is a practical complication for anyone hoping that fewer intermediaries automatically means better advertising. The quality of what survives the trip matters.
The lesson a reader can copy is straightforward: define the customer’s actual territory, examine who the existing plan already reaches, and buy the next audience deliberately. Adapt the creative to that territory. Agree on the measurement before launch. Keep reach, purchase intent and completed sales separate when judging the outcome.
That approach depends on usable exposure data and inventory capable of adding the intended audience. A narrowly targeted campaign can run out of suitable impressions; incomplete cross-platform signals can obscure duplication. On October 22, 2026, Locality appointed Saul Stetson to lead product. His assignment brings the company back to its central challenge: making audience knowledge usable. In Birmingham, or anywhere else, the next viewer still has to be found.
