Comcast rallies Charter, Cox around addressable advertising push

Comcast is calling on its cable brethren, Charter and Cox, for a new initiative called On Addressability focused on building a “sound, scalable and sustainable addressable” advertising solution for television.

Comcast’s initial focus with the initiative will be sharing what it’s learned about addressable advertising in the U.S. and in Europe with Sky Media. After that the focus will shift to working with the industry around definitions and standards; educating advertisers on the use cases for addressable advertising; and, for inventory and content owners, identifying best practices and business standards for transacting on addressable campaigns.

“TV is a tremendous, resilient medium with unparalleled reach and engagement, but data has changed the way that marketers use media. Historically, TV has lagged digital in this area, and this must change,” said Marcien Jenckes, president of advertising at Comcast Cable, in a statement. “Our industry needs to find a way to fully participate in, and lead, the data-driven future of advertising as only TV can. We’re fully committed to making this happen. That’s the impetus behind the On Addressability initiative.”

RELATED: NCC Media teams with OpenAP for audience-segmented ad buying

The rollout of the initiative is likely timed to coincide with today’s announcement that NCC Media – a nationwide TV advertising company owned by Charter, Comcast and Cox – is teaming up with OpenAP.

The deal is geared toward helping standardizing audience-based TV, and will benefit from access to NCC's footprint of 85 million households. The two companies said they will collaborate on more new data and measurement programs.

"Today's announcement represents the first major step in a transformative alignment between MVPDs and programmers," said David Levy, CEO of OpenAP, in a statement. "Together, we can accomplish a lot more in our quest to create a sustainable ad-supported TV ecosystem that works for advertisers, publishers, and most importantly consumers. This is just the beginning of our partnership, and we're excited to continue to collaborate with NCC on new data and measurement initiatives in the near future."