• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

Media buying is a frustrating process, particularly when buyers suspect a lack of transparency. But buyers and sellers alike are now partnering to help build that trust.

For instance, The Trade Desk has attracted several publishers to OpenAds, its new auction environment. Among them are AccuWeather, The Arena Group, BuzzFeed, The Guardian, Hearst Magazines, Hearst TV, Newsweek, People Inc., and Ziff Davis.

OpenAds is designed to “help advertisers understand what they are buying and the audience they are reaching with the best signal possible,” says Will Doherty, senior vice president, inventory development, The Trade Desk. 

Why are these high-profile publishers signing on?

"One of the biggest challenges in programmatic is understanding where value is lost between buyers and publishers," says Megan Hong, senior director of partner and yield management, The Arena Group. "OpenAds brings much-needed transparency to the auction, especially around fees and reseller activity, which helps us better understand how our inventory is actually being bought." 

Dave Strauss, vice president of revenue operations and strategy, The Guardian, adds that OpenAds “offers advertisers exceptional ROI and the opportunity to reach premium audiences," said "It means the highest bid wins in a transparent, auditable auction environment that publishers can independently verify.”

OpenAds, which builds on The Trade Desk’s prior OpenPath offering, “advances buyer transparency while reinforcing the value of premium publisher inventory," says Scott Both, vice president of programmatic monetization & operations, Hearst Magazines.

In a separate development, Magnite and Cognitiv have formed a partnership to also drive programmatic transparency. Magnite, a sell-side company, offers an activation and curation tool called ClearLine. Cognitiv is a performance partner powered by deep learning. 

The goal is to support “next-generation decisioning while offering buyers more flexibility and operational efficiency,” says Andrew Bez, vice president, enterprise sales at Magnite.

Buyers must now contend with streaming TV, audio, display and mobile., while publishers are struggling to monetize content, the firms state. This new arrangement will enrich the bidstream, the companies argue. 

“The programmatic ecosystem is growing more complex, and buyers are in need of advanced AI solutions which can enrich and optimize content signals through more direct supply paths, and increasingly streamlined workflows,” says Jana Jakovljevic, senior vice president of partnerships for Cognitiv.