• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, June 1, 2022

Go Addressable, the industry initiative launched a year ago by TV distributors to advance addressable advertising, has released a set of recommended industry guidelines. 

The guidelines — among the first to try to establish uniformity in practices — span addressable types, creative format, creative length, data matching and attribution vendors, among other aspects. 

The goal of the guidelines is to assist agencies in planning and establishing realistic launch schedules for campaigns that include addressable, and to enhance confidence through efficiency and consistency in processes and implementation. 

The guidelines — spelled out in full on Go Addressable’s site — include identification of “preferred” vendors to ensure consistency in data matching and attribution practices. 

While other vendors may be recommended once certified, the current preferred vendors for data matching (onboarding audience segments from buyers that work across operators) are LiveRamp, Experian and Epsilon. Those recommended for use for attribution studies across operators are LiveRamp, Experian and Neustar. 

Among the other guideline points: 

*Defining two naming conventions: “audience addressable” (the ability to dynamically deliver various advertisers’ advertisements targeted to different audiences in different homes all watching the same network at the same time) and “creative versioning” (the ability to deliver different creative messages to different audiences (households) within the same spot for a single advertiser. 

*Identifying the criteria that make up a creative format that can be used by all programmers and distributors: MPEG-2 stream type, MPEG1 Layer 2 audio type, 10080i frame rate and 1920 X 1080 width/height.

*Recommending that Go Addressable members support a standard 30-second length for addressable creative, to simplify and help spread adoption of addressable campaigns.   

*Verifying that all participating distributors have an established process to ensure that ads delivered addressably have an opportunity to be seen and are not being inserted or counted when the TV is off or when/if viewers are no longer watching. 

*Establishing a timeline for launching and/or reporting on a campaign to provide consistency to buyers and programmers when planning and activating campaigns within a specified timeline. The process spans the early planning stages all the way to campaign activation and attribution. 

Go Addressable has also created agency and programmer committees to help oversee addressable’s evolution. 

Go Addressable comprises eight television players, including cable operators Comcast, Altice USA and Charter, satellite operators Dish and DirecTV, and smart-TV maker Vizio. 

Other addressable groups include Project OAR, a consortium of major television companies and their ad-tech platforms led by Vizio, formed in March 2019 to define technical standards for addressable ads in linear and on-demand formats on smart TVs.

OpenAP is an open platform created in 2017 by TV networks (Fox, NBCUniversal, Viacom and Univision) for cross-publisher audience targeting.