A+E Global Media, AMC Global Media, Fox, Hallmark Media, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Scripps Networks, TelevisaUnivision, and Warner Bros. Discovery have entered into a partnership with Open AP to introduce a single, standardized way to link TV commercial exposure to business outcomes. This is the latest in a wide range of industry efforts to rely more on non-traditional viewership measurements.
OpenAP and media companies will begin a pilot phase with selected advertisers, agencies and measurement companies. Initial research will focus on demonstrating the benefits of a unified approach to measuring so-called business “outcomes,” which could include anything from a visit to a car showroom to requests for coupons made via interactive QR codes displayed alongside streaming ads. Initial results will be shared at key moments in the industry over the next year.
“Advertisers face increasing pressure to prove performance while navigating an increasingly complex landscape. This cross-publisher initiative simplifies that challenge by making it easier for Premium TV to connect, measure and invest with audiences strategically across data-driven video,” said Ryan Gould, president of U.S. advertising sales at Warner Bros. Discovery and chairman of the OpenAP board of directors.
In conversations taking place across the industry, executives say they hope the idea of using actual business transactions rather than mass impressions to determine the success of traditional advertising will gain more traction. In fact, in this week’s “Upfront” presentation, NBCUniversal, Fox and Amazon were among the sellers spotlighting the value of using “results” as the basis for advertising deals. US media companies try to sell off most of their advertising inventory in the early stages ahead of the next new programming cycle.
Open AP is a company specializing in setting standards for so-called “advanced advertising” and was founded by the former 21st Century Fox, Viacom and WarnerMedia.
As part of the new initiative, the parties will work to establish a new standardized process that will allow advertisers to connect results information to exposure data through a single integration point and support more consistent usage.
OpenAP is also introducing new campaign workflows to improve performance and enable buyers to deploy new capital across publishers and platforms. Future phases will introduce support for agent workflow interactions, allowing buy-side tools and agents to leverage unified attribution signals from CAPI to further automate and optimize video investments.
These capabilities form an interoperable infrastructure that integrates with existing buy-side tools while establishing a consistent framework for attribution, optimization, and performance measurement across premium video.
One of the biggest concerns about performance-based deals is that they are all bespoke and rely on data agreed by media companies partnering with specific advertisers. “The biggest barrier to growing viewer-based buying in television is not strategy, but fragmentation,” says Lisa Hardman, chief enterprise integration officer at RPA, a leading independent advertising agency. “Building on OpenAP’s existing audience and identity infrastructure to unify data, activations, and results, support for agent workflows allows clients to maintain a common trust and execution infrastructure without disintermediating the direct partnership that preserves the trust and execution infrastructure they rely on. This is how we modernize TV purchasing, building on the capital acquired by established partnerships and creating more room for technologies to interoperate and enable our clients to see consistent performance-driven results across the ecosystem.”
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