Viacom is launching an Advanced Advertising group and placing Bryson Gordon, executive vice president of Advanced Advertising, in charge of it.
The group will pursue ad product innovation and multiscreen, multiplatform advanced analytics. The team will consist of data scientists, researchers, engineers, product managers, and data and platform solution specialists in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
“Viacom has long established itself as a leader within the data-driven advertising space and with the formation of the Advanced Advertising group, we are furthering our investment in client-focused product innovation,” said Sean Moran, head of marketing and partner solutions, in a statement. “Bryson’s background and leadership, not only at Viacom, but also more broadly as a change agent for our industry, will help us continue to lead and deliver transformative advertising solutions for our partners.”
Gordon previously headed up data strategy at Viacom and helped launch products including Viacom Vantage. Prior to Viacom, Gordon spent 11 years at Microsoft.
Gordon will continue to run Viacom’s participation within OpenAP, the open platform for cross-publisher audience targeting and independent measurement initiative the company launched with Fox and Turner.
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OpenAP is run by a neutral third-party auditor and is aimed at using audience targeting and independent measurement to help adoption catch up to demand for targeted ads.
The OpenAP platform will be available to integrate with advertiser and agency planning systems. The companies said the available content reaches 93% of all television audiences today, and they are hoping to expand that number if additional publishers join OpenAP.
“While demand for audience targeting has grown significantly, adoption has been limited by the fact that audience buying is not as transparent, as consistent and as easy as traditional guarantees. It doesn’t need to be that complicated. That changes today,” the companies wrote in an open letter.