An Eye Towards the Future of Multi-Measurement. The NBCOne Developer Conference

While some in the press called the recent NBCOne Developer Conference “nerdy” it was, in fact, fascinating. The purpose of this 2^nd annual meeting was twofold.  First was to announce the many new innovations that NBC has added to their One-Platform. Second was a call to action on the part of the industry to foster more collaboration between vendors, programmers, marketers and overall competitors to accelerate the advancement of measurement and implement and adopt alternative currencies. 

One panel which highlighted the recent announcement of a long awaited JIC (Joint Industry Committee), summed up the importance of working together as an industry, crossing self-interested lines for the greater good. The goal is to establish a mutually acceptable audience measurement for both the buy and sell side of the industry.

Also presented at the conference were panelists who spoke about the value and efficacy of NBCU’s One Platform, how is it best used across departments and disciplines. NBCU’s Linda Yaccarino, Chairman Global Advertising and Partnerships, noted that when it comes to Big Media and Big Tech, it is important to have both because of the need for data unification and content in one platform. Therefore a JIC is vital to facilitate the breakdown of data silos for a mutually acceptable range of measurements to that position companies to maximize their value.  This requires us to move away from single solutions, move away from simply counting impressions and a move to a multi-currency future (which, incidentally, is available now).

Other highlights included an interview with Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak by CNBC’s journalist, Carl Quintanilla, on the future of AI where, according to Wozniak, computers are not meant to replace humans but to help them and that the path to success will be filled with errors and missteps.

According to Ryan McConville, EVP Advertising Platforms & Operations, NBCU, new and improved features of One Platform include the ability to activate on multi-currencies through iSpot and VideoAmp that optimize within the life of a campaign.  He also announced a partnership with Mediaocean that enables end-to-end capabilities for transactions which facilitates scaling.

John Lee, NBCU’s Chief Data officer announced that NBC Unified is now ready for targeting and measuring.  Notably, the use of data from trusted first party sources (their advertisers) can now be matched with NBC IDs that include data from content, their fans passions and even theme parks. There are new advertiser segments for measurement that match to real outcomes.

Deborah Wahl CMO GM presented a use case for NBC showcasing how the Platform was used to identify consumers for their electric cars last year and how it will be used this year for launching EVs in all classes from luxury (Cadillac) to mainstream (Chevy).   

Andy Cohen, Host and Executive Producer for Bravo, talked about the success of Fandom and used Bravo as an example with BravoCon while NBCU’s Global CMO, Josh Feldman spoke about eCommerce and Retail Media. Feldman announced the debut of One Platform Commerce partnerships with retail media Citris Ad and NBC Checkout which enables seamless purchase capabilities in partnership with Kerv Interactive. There is also Tech licensing for commerce technology which is a new business opportunity for NBCU.

NBCU’s EVP Measurement & Impact, Advertising & Partnerships, Kelly Abcarian, championed “let there be change” facilitated with iSpot and VideoAmp.  She also predicted that currencies in use today such as C3 and C7 will be out of date by 2024. Notably, NBCU has now “certified” 29 new partners and 5 different measurement categories. 

For those of us who have seen the advancement of technology and data with a sense of excitement, these developments and predictions and the expansion of systems such as NBCU’s One Platform, bode well for an industry that needs to keep up with change. As David Levy, Co-CEO and equity partner in Horizon Sports noted, maybe we are approaching a measurement renaissance.

 

 First published in www.MediaVillage.com Thought Leaders   

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

 

 

 

 

 

 

OpenAP Gains Firepower with Alliances, Advances and Scale

OpenAP is gathering momentum as new alliances and developments set the stage for greater growth. The advanced advertising company is engaged in some new initiatives and alliances that are expanding its strength as a cross-platform measurement solution.

There have been a range of new developments in the past year, and more are in the works, said the company's CEO David Levy. "OpenAP has been, from the inception, focused on centralizing the process for television publishers around audience activation," he noted, adding that it measures digital with linear television to enable a consistent way to create an audience.

This offers a consistency in the data, unifying results. The company's ultimate goal is to create an industry standard for audience-based cross-platform measurement.

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To manage all the disparate data, OpenAP introduced its OpenID solution about eight months ago. "It is our own identity framework and identity spine that we use for all of that audience activation," Levy explained. It's the backbone by which OpenAP can seamlessly interweave de-duplicated data sources for campaigns.

After launching OpenID as a framework, the company then debuted XPM Measurement, which gives users the ability to pool and normalize audiences "through OpenAP. And it allows them to "transact that [audience] across any broadcasting publisher today," Levy said. "You can actually get de-duplicated reach and frequency not just across all of your publishers but also across platforms, which has really been an elusive thing across television."

This has been a quiet initiative. OpenAP has worked directly with all publishers on one platform. There has been a lot of focus on guaranteeing that all the internal systems are integrated and in sync to ingest and process the data into one central identifier.

ViacomCBS is one of OpenAP's investors. For Radha Subramanyam, President and Chief Research and Analytics Officer, CBS Corp., it is critical to prove the value of broadcast television in conjunction with all of the linear-originated programming on other platforms.

"As audiences seek programming they like, there are more opportunities for viewing. We need to capture and standardize the collection of all viewing on any platform, and OpenAP is a way to do move the process forward," Subramanyam said.

Steve Silvestri, Senior Vice President, Audience Solutions, Discovery, concurred. "OpenAP offers the market a simple, more scalable approach to audience-based buying across the premium ecosystem," he said. "It represents more than just standard audience segments. It has evolved into a company that is solving for industry challenges across cross-platform measurement and insights, data adoption and clean room resolution, and ultimately programmer addressable activation."

Structural Change

OpenAP has also undergone a structural pivot for greater agility. Levy shifted OpenAP from a consortium model to a standard company structure. In other words, it no longer requires membership dues or consortium fees. "It is all based off transaction fees today," Levy explained. That removes some bureaucracy, enabling more fluid decision-making and execution of clear-cut goals.

It also makes it easier to serve all video-focused companies, including digital and advanced video-on-demand services. "We work with every national publisher across the ecosystem today, including Disney, including Discovery," Levy said. "The ability of an advertiser to come to us, create an audience that can then be used and transacted across any publisher was true at the beginning of [2021] and is true today."

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OpenAP's success is based on "how to make it easier for buyers to take one audience and have a good understanding of where that audience lives across all of these disparate screens," he noted. "It is important for the television community to come together and make it easier for buyers to do that."

With partners such as Discovery, OpenAP can go even further, faster. "Discovery is a large player in this space, and by joining OpenAP, we can accelerate the current efforts underway," Silvestri said.

More Growth Ahead

The changes are paying off. OpenAP is now a half-billion-dollar entity and is expected to become even bigger this year. Part of that is due to more widespread industry momentum.

"The growth in cross-platform advertising in general has been tremendous within the TV community," Levy said. "There was a significant increase in last year's Upfront, and we anticipate having an even larger jump in this Upfront. Most buyers now are really thinking about taking one consistent audience and being able to use that across both linear and digital.

"It is a very exciting time for us," he concluded.

 

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

OpenAP CEO David Levy Is Engaging Consumers with Compelling Advertising

David Levy has always been on a mission to "be more efficient with consumers' time and attention."  Throughout his career, he has focused on "what components of attention really matter."  His past contributions to the knowledge base of attention measurement are perfectly matched to maximizing the value of ad-supported television as part of his new role as the new Chief Executive Officer of OpenAP.

A Focus on Viewer Engagement
At his previous company, TrueX, which he co-founded and later sold to Fox, the challenge at the time was that "with the advent of digital advertising, we were in an unfortunate cycle of just putting more and more messaging in front of consumers and not actually getting quality attention because people were finding ways of avoiding the advertising," he recalled.  As a result, advertising effectiveness declined, as did the pricing, and "the only way to make enough money was by adding more ads per page."  His solution, he said, was to focus on "the most premium form of attention," which was dubbed an "engagement ad."

Engagement ads are full-screen experiences where the consumer is incentivized to interact with the ad for at least 30 seconds.  "We did a lot of work on the science of attention and how to drive quality interaction while offering consumers a better user experience," Levy explained.  By focusing on viewer engagement of ads in a world of greater ad-free options, media companies could "present consumers with an experience that was comparable to ad-free but within an ad-supported model," he added.

A Changing Ad-Supported Television Market
At Fox, Levy took the same focus on engagement that he had at TrueX and "brought it to the business challenges at Fox," where he worked in a Chief Operating Officer role for Fox's ad business.  Challenges to the ad-supported television model abound, not least of which is, "on one side you have Netflix and Amazon subsidizing these ad-free experiences, which consumers enjoy," and almost compelling ad-supported television to reduce its ad time to compete and create better consumer experiences.  "On the other hand, you have Facebook and Google flooding the market with valueless impressions -- highly targetable but with low attention," he asserted.  It was important to prove that the quality of attention could impact ROI.

The focus at Fox, which later proved pivotal for his role at OpenAP was three-fold:

1. Reaching the right consumers by finding better data to target more relevant advertising to them.

2. Once the right consumer was identified, developing ad products that best delivered those messages to the individual, "depending on where they were and on which device, where they were in the funnel, who they were."

3. Developing measurement that not only measured the quality of the attention but also optimized the experiences down the funnel.

A Move to OpenAP
"If you really want to evoke change, doing something in silos is not conducive to success," Levy said.  "The only way you are going to transform the industry is doing it together.  So, when we were approached by Viacom and [WarnerMedia] to form OpenAP, the premise was closely aligned with our vision to find better ways to get more efficient with consumers' time and attention."

Levy "fell in love with the vision" and "the people around the table" from those competing companies.  The purchase of Fox by Disney enabled him to make the move to OpenAP and "get back to [his] entrepreneurial roots" while still "staying connected to some of the exciting business challenges with people [he had] been working with for so long."

Next Steps for OpenAP
"The best way to scale any new ad product or any new investment in bettering the advertising ecosystem is if we all do it together," Levy said. To that end, he is seeking "adoption from everybody" to enable scale for any new marketplace developments.  OpenAP will be in a position to "evaluate new ad products in data-driven linear and optimized linear addressable to unify around the way we buy advanced ad products."

Going forward, Levy sees OpenAP moving from phase one -- which focused on unifying audience data on linear by individual company -- to phase two -- which standardizes segments across all OpenAP members.  Phase two, just recently announced, will go from unified audiences to unified campaigns, so that, for example, auto intenders for Viacom will have the same behavioral composition as auto intenders for Fox.  "We are introducing a tool for OpenAP with which advertisers can come in, define the audience segment that they want -- it will be standard across everybody -- put in campaign requirements and get back a unified campaign proposal across all of the member publishers," he explained.

OpenAP is also launching a digital marketplace that goes further.  "You can define your audience segments and not just get back a unified proposal, but also optimize across all of the publishers for reach and audience segment," Levy said.  Beyond that, he is thinking about how to accelerate the mission.  "There are so many opportunities with a unified approach -- with ad products, with measurement and with one of the biggest opportunities; building out a much more sophisticated data infrastructure that can be leveraged across all of the publishers," he noted.  "This will ultimately bring an automated marketplace that is cross-publisher, cross-device together."  But, he hastened to add, this effort will focus solely on premium inventory in the market: Long-form television ad-supported content resulting in less waste, more ROI and greater viewer engagement.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Television Week Takeaways: What Is the Future of TV?

With platform expansion, shifting viewer patterns and an overabundance of available content in various forms and lengths, one could be forgiven for thinking that linear TV is at grave risk or at least due for a major shift in its business model.  The future of TV in its many forms was the focus of discussion during the always frenetic Television Week series of conferences.  I attended several of them.  Read on for the primary takeaways.

Great New Consumer Opportunities
For the average consumer, there has never been a better time to be a fan of video.  There is an embarrassment of riches that can be accessed through a myriad of portals and services.  The challenge though, according to Richard Au, Head of Content Acquisition, Amazon Channels, is "how do you find what you like and discover new content?"

Enter the FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) companies, which are quickly developing an enviable range of video content that is increasingly matched with easy-to-access ad tech for advertisers.  Data plays a huge role not only in the ad tech but also in content curation. Amazon, for example, has developed algorithms that take a look at the content choices of other people who watch similar content.  "We also note what you subscribe to and create a personalized experience and editorial for any new content coming up," Au explained.

Great New Media Challenges … and How to Overcome Them
The advancements of FAANG have created stress on the legacy business model.  David Levy, Executive Vice President Non-Linear Revenue, Fox and Aaron Radin, Senior Vice President Partnerships and Portfolio Products, NBCUniversal, weighed in on the broadcast television model.  "The future of TV buying is to enable audience-based buying at scale through efficient automated platforms," Levy said.  "We need to introduce new measurement solutions beyond cost and reach that properly value attention."

To that end, competitors such as Fox and NBCU have to begin to work together to forge these protocol solutions and build pipelines.  "The keys to success are automation, APIs, data, scalable ad products, markets and measurement," Radin explained.  This needs to be accomplished in an accredited, industry-based manner.  Cross platform solutions are pivotal.  "Google and Netflix have great automated buying options to buy at scale across platforms," he added.  "We need to find ways to present all of our inventory, across all platforms, converging our inventory and enabling transactions."

The legacy model of advertising will be tough to change.  "How do we take 16 minutes of ads in a program and place it in an environment that has fewer ads?" Levy asked.  "We need to get a lot better at measurements including attention, where they are in the funnel, the quality of attention and any change in perception.  If we are just measuring cost and reach we have no chance."

Great Unknowns
As cooperative as the legacy media players might become, there are still the unknowns that can negatively impact the business.  Jeffrey Weber, Chief Executive Officer, ZoneTV noted that we are in this in-between time where new aggregation models for content and channel choice haven't yet settled into an industry standard.  Its hard for consumers to find content that they may like.  Weber believes that operators need to harness the power of the electronic programming guide and help viewers locate the right content at the right time.

Lance Neuhauser, Chief Executive Officer, 4C, said it is important to make the most of every data set.  He stated that, "Social is the largest set of anthropological information now available," he said.  "It is the largest focus group."  He sees that consumers are using ad breaks to engage in social media or texting.  "We need to start from the future and work our way back, and recognize that consumers no longer need to watch ads," he advised. "They can fast-forward, subscribe, pick up their phones, etc."  Linear TV is playing catch up -- and it will be slow.  "You have linear trying to change with 50 years of infrastructure," he added.

Great Advice
The best advice, which was repeated throughout the day, was that businesses need to focus on the viewer and not on the platform.  Re-focusing on the end user can enable a more flexible and successful business model that reinforces a strong future for television.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com