Once Competitors, Xandr to Support OpenAP's TV Identifier

First partners and then competitors, OpenAP and AT&T’s ad-tech unit Xandr are back working together again, with the latter announcing support of OpenAP’s television identifier. Beginning this fall ahead of the 2022 broadcast season, Xandr’s Invest TV platform will support OpenAP’s OpenID, a digital-like identifier that would allow advertisers using Xandr’s platform to plan and buy linear campaigns on advanced audiences across the programmers working with OpenAP. This partnership to scale audience-based TV advertising is the latest about-face for the two companies. WarnerMedia (then Turner) was a founding member of OpenAP in 2017, but it left the group in 2019 and a year later would become a key media owner within Xandr Invest, its sister company’s audience targeting platform and OpenAP competitor. The groups have reunited following several years of change. OpenAP has shifted from programmer-owned consortium to standalone company, and Xandr’s position within AT&T is unclear as the telecommunications giant sheds its media assets, including a recent mega-spinoff of WanrerMedia. Plus, competing programmers and TV operators are increasingly coming together to address shifting viewer and advertiser demands that threaten their traditional businesses. Xandr returns to 'platform roots' Mike Welch, evp and gm of Xandr, said the company is changing its strategy and returning to its “platform roots” to be a partner and technology provider, instead of seeming to want to consolidate the industry. “By being more independent and sort of structurally operating separately from Warner[Media], we're showing the industry that it's about all inventory owners being ... treated equally, as opposed to favoring a sister company,” said Welch, adding that there have been firewalls in place preventing Xandr from favoring deals with WarnerMedia. For OpenAP, this pact adds scale to its already growing operation of bringing consistent audience definitions to TV advertising. The company first announced it OpenID in April with the support of 11 major networks, including NBCUniversal, Disney and ViacomCBS. OpenAP CEO David Levy said there was crossover between his company’s offerings and that of Xandr Invest, but lines are clearer now as Xandr takes the platform approach and OpenAP works to bring identity resolution to the TV space. Programmers, distributors, advertisers and ad-tech companies are looking to change their approaches as linear TV declines and viewers quickly embrace digital streaming services. “We need tools and workflows that allow us to find that audience across all touchpoints and be able to transact against that unified audience signal, which is why we really like the partnership between OpenAP and Xandr … because it brings that level of consistency,” said Mike Fisher, vp of advanced TV at Essence, and representing a GroupM cross-agency working group to define the future of TV. Eight major distributors–including Comcast, Cox Media, Charter Communications, Dish Media and Vizio–last week announced the formation of Go Addressable, a consortium to make addressable advertising across disparate pools of inventory easier. It’s the latest of a handful of consortia, whose members are often competitors, aiming to modernize TV advertising. Tracey Scheppach, CEO of Matter More Media, said “collaboration is required” for data-driven advertising, since it’s too difficult to sustain a marketplace where premium TV inventory is available in disparate, disconnected places. Having direct input from the buy-side would help these groups succeed, she added. “In the end, you've got to listen to the money. And if you don't have the money voice in there, then you have a lot of egos fighting over their own solutions,” said Scheppach. Go Addressable joins the likes of On Addressability and Project OAR as the latest addressable TV consortium. OpenAP shifted to become a standalone business more than two years ago, and last year advanced TV identity vendor Blockgraph also graduated from consortium to company. OpenAP’s Levy doesn’t believe the consortium model works, saying it isn’t possible for stakeholders to focus on their joint initiative when they’re mostly devoted to work at their own companies. “I think you need to have a traditional organization that has centrally devoted resources, that is compensated in a way that incentivizes people to do the right thing for the organization,” said Levy. “There's a lot of reasons why consortia are very difficult. And while there's always aligned interests, consortia as a business structure is probably not the best.” T-Mobile Is Quietly Paving the Way for its Ad-Tech Unit