NCC Media teams with OpenAP for audience-segmented ad buying

NCC Media and OpenAP are teaming up to allow national advertisers to use OpenAP’s audience segment definitions when buying across NCC Media’s linear, VOD and addressable ad inventory.

The agreements sees two separate advanced advertising ventures – one led by major broadcasters and programmers, the other led by major pay TV providers – working together to expand audience segmentation in ad buying. NCC Media is a joint venture between Charter, Comcast and Cox; OpenAP is a joint venture between Fox, NBCUniversal and Viacom – WarnerMedia departed the venture earlier this year.

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."

RELATED: Fox, NBCU and Viacom unveil OpenAP 2.0 update for audience segment ad platform

The NCC Media deal arrives shortly after the launch of OpenAP 2.0, and the addition of workflow automation for national linear and long-form digital video, which the group developed in collaboration with Accenture and FreeWheel. The update to OpenAP will go live in time for fall 2019 campaigns.

OpenAP 2.0 will now let buyers put together cross-publisher audience segments for both national linear and long-form digital video, and submit orders to activate these segments through a centralized cross-publisher marketplace. OpenAP 2.0 will be accessible at OpenAP.tv and via APIs for agency planning systems and approved demand side platforms. OpenAP 2.0 will also now provide cross-publisher analytics including pre-campaign performance projections and post-campaign delivery metrics like total unduplicated reach, overall tCPM and total audience impressions.