CHICAGO – The increasingly complex world of advanced, targeted TV advertising may settle down into an accepted norm of multiple standards, buying channels and viewer identity profiles – as long as there are sufficient connectors to translate between each of them.
In the latest move, OpenID, the US TV network consortium, is launching its own such identity system.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Matt Spiegel, who runs the media division of TransUnion, explains how the identity system, powered by his company, will work.
Powering ID
“Each of these different players in the industry need to create an understanding of identity and be able to translate that across different platforms and have the right connect connection points,” Spiegel says. “They all have to be able to translate from one data set to another, from one identity to another.
“In order to do that behind the scenes, you’ve got to have the right different data matching mechanisms … called ‘crosswalks’ … to maintain a translation layer from one ID set to another. What we’re doing is giving … the OpenAP ID that ability.
“When they work with their network partners or their advertising partners, because it’s underpinned by TransUnion’s intelligence and we are connected to all these different ID sets, the ability is (for targeting) to … start anywhere. (For example), start with a client’s first-party data, start with the network’s first party data, start with a third-party available data.”
OpenAP’s progress
OpenAP is a way for ad buyers to buy across AMC Networks, Fox, NBC Universal, ViacomCBS, Univision and The Weather Channel properties.
Launched three years ago, OpenAP first aimed to harmonize the meta data descriptions used by a variety of TV broadcasters in order to make selling more scaleable.
Then it made a step-change by launching an actual marketplace through which ad buyers can purchase data-driven TV ads across those networks from OpenAP itself, or else through buying platforms with OpenAP integrations.
And it launched a supply-side platform (SSP) in January.
Start anywhere
It announced its OpenID in April, calling it a “a consistent person-level audience definition that is unified across linear and digital video environments and enables efficient matching with viewership currencies for distribution to multiple television publishers, evolving advanced TV from age and gender demographics to ID-based targeting”.
According to the launch:
“Advertisers will start every campaign by identifying an audience that will be resolved to a set of OpenIDs, which can be broad or narrow based on campaign objectives.
“Audiences are defined at the ID level then matched to viewership data and platform IDs for linear, digital and addressable activation to create a unified, cross-platform OpenID audience.
“OpenIDs are shared with TV publishers for use in linear and digital campaigns, with publishers using their internal tools to build targeted media plans.”