• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, October 11, 2019

As reported in Digital News Daily, OpenAP this week began promoting the launch of its enhanced, now-transactional platform, OpenAP Market. 

This 2.0 iteration (which officially launched Oct. 1) is a notable development for ATV because of its so-far-unique ability to make centralized, audience-based buys that span both linear and digital channels. All linear and digital inventories of the media companies in its consortium — Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal, Viacom and Univision — are available for campaign buys. 

Here, in a Q&A conducted by email, CEO David Levy answers some additional questions about the platform. 

OpenAP Market buys are impression-based. How will units be allocated within these centralized plans/buys?  

Levy: In the new OpenAP Market, an advertiser will define their target audience and campaign goals once. It is now a fully transactional platform, which means advertisers can activate audience-based direct buys and enter campaign parameters — including budget by publisher, audience segment, flight dates, ad unit lengths and optimization goals. 

These parameters will then be submitted in a single order request via the OpenAP platform, and buyers will get back a unified cross-publisher, cross-platform proposal with guaranteed delivery against that target audience. 

How will the specific mix/allocations to the various participating consortium publishers, across linear and digital channels, be determined for a given campaign? 

Levy: Advertisers can either choose to allocate the budget themselves manually and have the optimization happen at the publisher level, or give OpenAP the latitude to create the mix. If OpenAP creates the mix, the percentages will depend on the audience segment and what supply and demand are for that segment for a given campaign flight.   

Is the inventory available through the participants strictly national, or are local TV affiliates and their associated digital properties potentially part of these buys? 

Levy: Inventory available includes national inventory from each of our member networks, across both linear and digital viewing environments. It does not include local affiliate share at this time. The digital side includes long-form/FEP video spanning desktop, mobile, CTV, and set-top box VOD inventory.  

How are rates are being determined? 

Levy: Rates are determined by supply and demand for the audience segment defined by the advertiser.  

What are the next steps for the organization? You’ve alluded to its becoming "standalone." Might the current consortium media participants bow out at some point? Is OpenAP developing a business model to enable it to succeed/grow in the absence of media companies' continuing investment or financial support? 

Levy: When OpenAP was founded, the focus was really about the publishers coming together to collaborate and create a common audience definition standard across each publisher.

Earlier this year, OpenAP members Fox, NBCUniversal and Viacom made bold moves to double down on this mission and to invest in bringing further innovation and automation to audience-based advertising in television. Since April, OpenAP has accelerated its trajectory in order to bring more value to advertisers by building a dedicated executive team and staff and by launching the OpenAP Market.

Now that we’ve launched, our focus is delivering on our promise to advertisers and helping them realize the power of advanced advertising on TV. We will continue to build out OpenAP and make it more versatile for the industry, including planned cross-platform capabilities. We anticipate that more publishers will join down the road, though we are hyper-focused in the near term on continuing to develop greater integration with agency and advertising planning and reporting systems. 

Our goal is to preserve the integrity and openness of television buying and posting that has made TV and its premium content such a trusted platform.