• by Wayne Friedman , March 20, 2023

Warner Bros. Discovery says it will partner with Comscore and VideoAmp for “alternative currencies” when it comes to making deals with national advertisers across its linear TV and advanced advertising inventory for this year’s upfront ad market.

She adds that these deals will “operationalize against multiple currencies at scale and unlock more value for our partners this upfront season.”

A year ago February, the company, formerly known as WarnerMedia, said it would be developing currency in a similar effort working with Comscore, iSpot.TV and VideoAmp.

At around the same time, Discovery Inc said it was testing data from just two of those measurement firms -- Comscore and VideoAmp -- for its advertisers including AT&T and State Farm.

This comes after news last month that national TV programmers would form a “Joint Industry Committee” -- Fox Corp., NBCUniversal, Paramount Global, TelevisaUnivision, and Warner Bros. Discovery, along with advanced advertising company OpenAP -- to develop new cross-platform measurement.

Since then, an invitation has been offered for major media agencies to join the group.

A year ago, Warner Bros. Discovery developed a test-and-learn framework for evaluating third-party measurement providers -- looking at five key areas: methodology, reporting, activation, stewardship and campaign findings.

- This resulted in four key areas to consider:
- Standardization- coming from “building blocks” across currency measurement partners
- Personification -- who is in front of the TV set
- Identity resolution -- having multiple identity partners to increase the coverage for better accuracy
- Transaction Capability -- integrating systems and workflows on the buy and sell side for both linear and digital.