There’s now a seat at the advanced advertising table for NBCUniversal. The parent company of NBC, Telemundo and a host of cable networks has joined Open A.P. in a move it says underscores “the continued need to give advertisers a more scalable solution for marrying the reach and scale of premium video with advanced advertising capabilities.”
Open A.P. is a partnership created by Fox, Turner and Viacom. Now, NBCUniversal will join the three cable TV entities for “a multi-year, co-development partnership focused on new platforms for automated buying, advanced formats and cross-platform measurement and currency.”
Importantly, the arrangement will allow the combination of NBCUniversal’s Audience Studio data capabilities with Open A.P.’s standardized data sets.
Specifically, NBCUniversal will license to Open A.P. its Audience Graph and Data Sync. Further, advertisers and agencies using Open A.P. are gaining access to the Freewheel Shared Insights Platform.
NBCUniversal EVP/Business Operations & Strategy Krishan Bhatia said, “We have spent the last four years developing the industry’s best tools to empower advertisers to better target their marketing campaigns to desired audiences. We’re excited to unleash the capabilities of our Audience Studio for the rest of the industry and share our underlying technology to propel the entire business forward.”
In a joint statement, Fox’s President of Ad Revenue Joe Marchese, Turner’s President of Ad Sales Donna Speciale, and Viacom’s Head of Marketing & Partner Solutions Sean Moran added, “Open A.P. was formed with a clear mission: to bring the industry together in order to advance the experience, efficiency and effectiveness of advertising. With NBCUniversal aligning with the consortium, we are all accelerating the industry’s efforts in providing more premium scale to drive greater adoption of advanced audience targeting, while laying the groundwork for future innovation.”
As NBCUniversal sees it, the new capabilities empower marketers to create audience segments and buy national television campaigns across each company’s portfolio which, combined, comprise 50% of total TV inventory across national broadcast and cable entertainment.
Beyond linear optimization, the companies will accelerate their joint development of API-based self-service tools, standardized measurement and attribution capabilities, addressable offerings and cross-platform advertising technology, NBCUniversal said.
Open A.P. launched in 2016 by Fox, Viacom and Turner as a consortium of television publishers and is operated by a leading, neutral third-party auditor. It offers cross-publisher targeting and independent posting for advanced audiences.
