Top media companies form consortium to standardize addressable TV advertising
Major US media companies have teamed up to form a consortium dedicated to developing ad standards that simplify selling addressable advertisements on connected televisions.
The latest industry collaboration takes aim at addressable advertising
Called Project OAR (Open Addressable Ready), the group will work to create a direct ad-management pathway between programmers and distributors.
Disney's Media Networks, AT&T's Xandr, Discovery, CBS, Turner, Hearst Television, AMC Networks, and Comcast's FreeWheel and NBC Universal are all members of the consortium's oversight committee.
Vizio has said it will enable its connected TVs to read the standard once it's ready. Inscape, a data company that Vizio owns, will work with the consortium to develop the technology.
The group plans to have a working product by spring of this year, and fully deploy it by early 2020.
Though Vizio is set to be the first TV maker to accept the standard, the group is urging other connected-device companies to do the same.
Jodie McAfee, senior vice-president at Inscape, said: "The standard will define the baseline for ad delivery, impression verification and privacy compliance, but networks will have plenty of room to create unique and enriched advertising experiences. We are making this flexible enough to enable interactivity and other bells and whistles that have yet to be imagined."
With the promise of addressability – the ability to target viewers individually – CTV advertising is on the rise.
A recent report from Extreme Reach found that premium publishers ran more than half their video ad impressions on CTV in the fourth quarter of 2018, a 154% year-over-year increase. However, there are still kinks holding back advertising on CTV.
For instance, a lack of standards around basics like ad formats or ad ingestion protocols can force a platform to transcode each ad as it comes in, a timely process that can result in that platform running slate, thus burning an impression.