OpenAP is open for business
Advanced TV consortium OpenAP, made up of Viacom, NBC Universal, Fox and Univision, has officially launched its audience-based buying tool, called the OpenAP Market.
OpenAP officially introduces its buy-side marketplace
The buy-side marketplace, which launched on 1 October following a one-month closed beta period, lets advertisers plan and buy campaigns across each publisher's owned-and-operated TV footprint, whether that’s traditional linear, connected TV (CTV), set-top box on demand, mobile or desktop.
This means advertisers can trade on guarantees based on first-party data or defined audience segments, such as high-income households, instead of traditional metrics from the likes of Nielsen and Comscore. An advertiser can go to each publisher directly or go through the OpenAP market to buy ad space on any or all of the networks.
In July, OpenAP chief executive officer David Levy told The Drum that infusing audience data into cross-platform TV buys will provide the ad industry with “a much more full picture of who the viewers are than we ever had before.”
Levy dubbed the current phase of the group OpenAP 2.0, and now its marketplace is on-boarding around 50 new campaigns that will run through the fall TV season.
“Two years ago, OpenAP was founded on the thesis that the only way for advanced advertising to truly scale was for TV networks to come together and collaborate to create new standards that would push our industry forward,” Levy said in a company statement. “Because of the partnership and investment made by Fox, NBCUniversal and Viacom, this launch marks a significant milestone that we believe will fundamentally change the way TV advertising is bought and sold.
Publishers are teaming together to make buying all forms of advanced TV easier as media buyers struggle to break into the promising field of connected TV.
Agencies have said they’d like a seat at the table within TV consortiums, such as OpenAP and Project OAR, to make sure their problems are addressed.
According to Extreme Reach, half of all digital ad impressions are served on CTV as of Q2 of 2019, marking a 12% jump from the previous year.
However, eMarketer found that ad buyers are struggling to buy CTV inventory given the lack of standardization and fragmentation among media owners.
The research firm found that after high costs, the main hurdles preventing US agencies from buying digital video inventory are inadequate metrics or campaign measurement, lack of large scale audience, and difficulty with data integration.