Discovery Joins OpenAP as Minority Owner

OpenAP is opening itself up to a new co-owner. Discovery has joined the advanced TV advertising company as a minority owner in the joint venture, alongside Fox, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS. As part of the deal, two of Discovery’s top ad sales execs will join OpenAP’s board of directors: Jon Steinlauf, chief U.S. advertising sales officer, and Jim Keller, evp, digital ad sales and advanced advertising. The media company is expanding its relationship with OpenAP after first signing on to its common TV audience identifier, OpenID, which debuted last April. Discovery is also among the media companies participating in XPm, the cross-platform measurement framework OpenAP rolled out last month. OpenAP Unveils Cross-Platform Measurement Framework for 2022 Broadcast Season “Discovery is excited to take an active role shaping the future of advanced audience buying,” said Keller in a statement. “Given our current momentum, influence and growth of audience-based sales, we believe Discovery can help further the work OpenAP has been doing to initiate meaningful change in the market.” Given that Discovery is joining OpenAP just months before its merger with WarnerMedia is expected to close, the move is likely to ultimately return WarnerMedia—one of OpenAP’s founders in 2017—to a major role in the company following its 2019 exit. “The last two years have demonstrated the force of change that can happen when we take an audience-first approach to reimagining TV advertising for media owners, advertisers and consumers alike,” OpenAP CEO David Levy said in a statement. “We are grateful for the increased commitment Discovery is making to work alongside us on this journey of propelling further growth of the marketplace.” OpenAP's evolution Last year, OpenAP changed its model, evolving from a consortium to a more traditional company, with Fox Corp., NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS as minority owners and the central team managing operations. As part of last April’s OpenID announcement, any TV network can now accept audiences from OpenAP. Beyond the four minority owners, those participating publishers now include AMC Networks, A+E Networks, Crown Media, Disney, Univision, WarnerMedia and The Weather Channel. “Discovery’s commitment further validates OpenAP’s mission and builds on the success and scale of our collective organizations work to build a more advanced model for TV advertising that focuses on audiences. OpenAP has been a catalyst for bringing programmers and marketers together to change the model, and we’re proud to now have Discovery join us to accelerate these efforts,” said a trio of OpenAP board members—Fox’s svp of data strategy and sales innovation Dan Callahan, NBCUniversal advertising and partnerships’ president and chief business officer Krishan Bhatia and ViacomCBS’ coo of advertising revenue John Halley—in a joint statement. OpenAP and Discovery declined to comment on whether Discovery’s investment will continue following the WarnerMedia merger, but clearly the company would not have agreed to sign on for just a few months, only to withdraw once it becomes Warner Bros. Discovery. WarnerMedia, which in 2017 created the OpenAP audience targeting platform alongside Viacom and Fox, pulled out of the consortium two years later, as parent company AT&T opted to focus on its in-house ad-tech unit, Xandr. But a lot has changed since then: last May, WarnerMedia and Discovery announced plans to merge—a deal that is expected to close mid-year—and AT&T sold Xandr last month, subject to regulatory reviews. WarnerMedia had already begun to slowly return to the OpenAP fold; it began accepting OpenAP audiences last year— both it and Xandr support OpenID—and is also participating in XPm.