LAS VEGAS — Amid the growing consumer awareness – and, in some quarters, discontent – over digital ad tracking and targeting, one TV ad-tech firm may have just one-upped the rest in the race to provide control.
This month, Tru Optik, a data management platform which facilitates ads for connected TV platforms, launched OptOut.TV, giving consumers a one-click way to refuse audience-based targeting of over-the-top TV ads.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Tru Optik CEO Andre Swanston explains why his company launched the program.
“Everybody knows about all the advancements that have been made with with leveraging third party data, whether it’s demo data or auto intender, CBG, or advertisers wanting to leverage their first party data to advertise on Roku and Apple TV and Fire TV,” he says.
“But there’s something that wasn’t happening, and that was the same types of protections and controls that the consumer had across desktop and mobile for how data was used to reach them with target advertising was not really there at any sort of scalable or viable solution across connected TV.”
In the desktop and mobile world, AdChoices, formed by a collection of advertising bodies, allows consumers to change their ad targeting preferences, with logos and links often displayed on many visual ads.
Swanston hopes OptOut.TV accomplishes a similar goal in the emerging world of OTT. Apparently, “dozens” of ad-tech platforms including Videology have committed to comply with his new standard.
How is it accomplished? “Tru Optik has a household graph,” Swanston adds. “We have tens of millions of homes in the US that we have anonymously mapped back to a persistent Tru Optik ID, which then we can understand against that Tru Optik ID – what are the cookies, what are the device IDs, what are the IP addresses, what are the connected TV user agent strings?
“And so, if you’re in that household, and you’re tied back to that household ID and you decide to opt out, we understand what households had opted out to.”
But, though the program allows consumers to opt out entirely, it also allows them to customise the data they give such platforms, so as to enhance – not just reject – their targeted TV advertising.
This video was produced by Beet.TV in Las Vegas at CES 2018. Please visit this page for more coverage.