Discovery takes minority ownership in TV consortium OpenAP

Discovery is making a deeper investment in OpenAP’s vision for audience-based advertising across TV platforms. The media conglomerate is taking a minority ownership in the TV consortium, joining fellow minority owners Fox, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS. Founded in 2017, OpenAP has sought to standardize audience targeting on TV and deliver consistent measurement across linear and digital audiences. “The last two years have demonstrated the force of change that can happen when we take an audience-first approach to reimagining TV advertising for media owners, advertisers and consumers alike,” said David Levy, chief executive of OpenAP. “We are grateful for the increased commitment Discovery is making to work alongside us on this journey of propelling further growth of the marketplace.” Discovery is hoping to build out its framework for cross-platform, audience-based ad buying, while OpenAP will seek to grow the overall market for its advanced advertising capabilities. As part of the new ownership, two Discovery executives will join OpenAP’s board of directors—Jon Steinlauf, chief U.S. advertising sales officer, and Jim Keller, executive VP of digital ad sales and advanced advertising. With a voice at the table, Discovery will play a role in developing OpenAP’s corporate strategy and product roadmap. The investment builds on Discovery’s previous partnerships with OpenAP. Last April, the company integrated OpenAP's identifier, which creates a single identity for audiences on linear and digital streaming. Called OpenID, the solution is designed to work irregardless of which platform the audience is watching, thus helping advertisers to streamline targeting across both. More recently, Discovery partnered with OpenAP on its XPm measurement framework, which is built on the OpenID identifier. XPm enables independent measurement companies to provide a unified post-campaign report to advertisers on who their ads reached on both TV and digital, as opposed to having two separate pictures of their audiences. Discovery is leaning deeper into ad targeting efficiencies as it awaits the closing of its merger with WarnerMedia. The combined company, which will be called Warner Bros. Discovery, will hold a large amount of ad inventory for both linear and digital streaming, making the advertising capabilities offered by OpenAP more compelling. It’s worth noting that WarnerMedia (previously Turner) was one of the original founding members of OpenAP, but pulled out of the organization in 2019 as parent company AT&T focused more of its efforts on its ad tech unit, Xandr. That division is now being sold to Microsoft, per a deal announced last month.

Discovery takes minority ownership in TV consortium OpenAP

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