OpenAP – a cross-audience ad platform started by Fox, Turner and ViacomCBS – is launching OpenID, a new identifier that pulls linear viewership and digital audiences into a common identity framework.
The company described OpenID as a person-level audience definition that enables matching with viewership currencies for distribution to multiple television publishers. The ID is built on a graph of offline and online data and is able to connect with buy-side data partners and sell-side platforms.
Audiences are defined at the ID level then matched to viewership data and platform IDs for linear, digital and addressable activation to create a unified, cross-platform audience. The company said OpenIDs will be shared with TV publishers for use in linear and digital campaigns and with publishers using their internal tools to build targeted media plans.
"The creation of an interoperable identity framework leveraged by all premium TV networks will give advertisers the clearest path toward omni-channel planning, optimization and measurement. Television has always had a competitive advantage with its quality of content, and now there is tremendous opportunity for publishers to lead the path toward an omni-channel future,” said OpenAP CEO David Levy in a statement. “With the OpenID, we will lay the foundation to truly compete with the digital platforms from a data and measurement perspective, while providing advertisers the data and insights needed to deliver on cross-platform."
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Participating publishers able to accept OpenIDs include AMC Networks, A+E Networks, Crown Media, Discovery, Disney, Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal, Univision, ViacomCBS, WarnerMedia and The Weather Channel.
GroupM, dentsu, Omnicom Media Group, Haworth Marketing + Media, and Horizon Media will be the first agencies to integrate with and activate all audiences for advanced cross-platform TV campaigns as OpenIDs. The partnership with OpenAP will enable each holding company to optimize campaigns across TV publishers on all platforms – including data-driven linear, digital FEP, OTT and CTV.
OpenAP said OpenIDs will help with launching cross-platform use cases requested by the buy-side with new capabilities planned for launch in Broadcast Year 2022.
OpenAP is partnering with TransUnion, which will serve as the “identity backbone,” creating a common ID layer for connections across the TV ecosystem. Resolution to OpenIDs is powered through match keys – including Name, Address, Mobile Ad ID (MAID) and IP Address – and resolved to consumers and households within TransUnion and Tru Optik Identity Graphs across match key sets offered by TransUnion.
OpenAP also said it is collaborating with The Trade Desk to work on interoperability between the OpenID and Unified ID 2.0, the industry-wide initiative to create a cross channel identifier for the open internet.