OpenAP wants the TV industry to speak the same language. Here’s why some of the largest agencies and networks are listening.
Television stalwarts such as Fox, Disney and NBCUniversal throw support behind the company’s new identity solution, OpenID.
OpenAP wants to make sure buyers and sellers in the television arena are speaking the same language. The company on Wednesday debuted its identifier — OpenID — which it says will work across its member networks when buying or selling ads for both linear and advanced TV.
OpenID will be interoperable with Unified ID 2.0, the company says, which immediately bolsters the scale for both solutions. Ad buyers, for instance, will be able to match UID 2.0 data against OpenAP’s member networks, which include AMC, Fox, Univision, Disney, A+E, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS and The Weather Channel. Additionally, Dentsu Media, Haworth Marketing + Media, Horizon Media, WPP’s GroupM and Omnicom will activate all advanced TV campaigns as OpenID audiences, according to the company.
“The creation of an interoperable identity framework leveraged by all premium TV networks will give advertisers the clearest path toward omni-channel planning, optimization and measurement,” says David Levy, CEO of OpenAP. “Television has always had a competitive advantage with its quality of content and now there is tremendous opportunity for publishers to lead the path toward an omnichannel future.”
OpenAP made its name after developing a unique identifier for linear TV that worked across networks. Linear audience data from Disney, for example, could be matched against an audience from Fox. The debut of OpenID signals the company is now extending those linear capabilities to the digital realm.
“The last year has accelerated the need for TV advertising to move from age or gender GRPs to people-based impressions,” Brad Stockton, VP of U.S. national video innovation at Dentsu’s Amplifi, said. “Being able to seamlessly target advanced audiences that are unified across linear and digital viewing environments, then see reach and frequency across a clear set of people-based IDs, is critical in our ability to move the market from standard demos to advanced audiences.”
OpenAP adds that its identifier is built on a robust graph of offline and online data and can connect directly with buy-side data partners and sell-side platforms. The company also says that OpenID will equip TV publishers with the ability to protect against data leakage through its framework, which will allow them to reduce onboarding costs while also boosting measurement and attribution capabilities.
Worldwide linear TV ad spend fell 16 percent to roughly $156 billion in 2020, though that figure is estimated to recover by 1 percent this year, according to marketing intelligence company WARC Data. Ad-supported streaming, meanwhile, is projected to triple its revenue to $24 billion by 2025.