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

 

Measurement in an Age of Data and Fragmentation

Obviously cross platform measurement in all of its forms is a hot topic now as the de-accreditation of Nielsen’s local and national TV measurement services by the MRC along with a highly fragmented media environment creates uncertainty and challenge.

I was curious as to what the industry as a whole was thinking on the subject and reached out to the Research Wonks, a forum for those involved in media and advertising research, analytics and data science, last week. The response was so large that it required two articles on the subject – one appearing in this publication and the other in Mitch Oscar’s Hocus Focus newsletter.

Measurement Currency – Looking Back and Looking Forward

When they say that the past is prologue, they must be thinking of media measurement. We’ve had a measurement currency (and by currency I mean a standard metric that can be used as a comparison point between companies and platforms) since the beginning of media which has helped guide the valuation of inventory to this day. But as the industry fragments, it can leave us with a sense of uncertainty as the new solutions that best address the new environment have yet to be agreed upon.

For Jeff Boehme, Chief Executive, Executive Media Consultants, the future of measurement is as fragmented as the number of platforms. "I have observed over the past ten years the industry has evolved to create and accept multiple currencies for media planning and buying out of necessity,” he noted and added, “Going forward, successful media executions now must include metrics of performance beyond age and gender to measure outcomes defined outside traditional frameworks. I believe we will continue to embrace multiple currencies, already available through various walled gardens, but need transparency and audited standards to provide the necessary confidence for longer term use.”

Howard Shimmel, President, Janus Insights and Analysis, is concerned that we can easily go off track by focusing on the past while the future looms large. “I worry that we're distracted trying to solve for 2012 research needs- fixing linear TV currency measurement- when what we really need to be focused on is a future state integrated planning/activation/measurement research infrastructure to incorporates all video channels- linear, addressable linear, AVOD, CTV,” he warned. “Building that infrastructure is hard- requires panels, first party data from walled gardens, common target audience definitions across platform, ability to integrate RF forecasts for linear and addressable media, segmentation schema that reflects the way that media is consumed,” he added.

Media Currency – Getting to a Strong Place

There are those optimists, like Radha Subramanyam, President and Chief Research and Analytics Officer, CBS, who are ready for the measurement challenge. “The media measurement industry is ripe for real market transformation,” she informed, “There are now multiple providers of trusted and high-quality data measurement across video platforms, and our own data is critical as well. The measurement marketplace is undergoing massive diversification.”

Yet, the path to currency is still open to discussion. For Michael Vinson, Chief Research Officer, Comscore, the primacy of long standing panels that the industry has relied upon in the past may be up for discussion. “Recruited-sample panels can either be used as the foundational element of a measurement, or to add additional context to a measurement based on large transactional data sets,” he began. But, “When panel response/participation/cooperation rates are in the 10 to 20% range, we can no longer pretend that the panel is in any sense representative of the population. Moreover, media fragmentation puts severe pressure on the size of a panel, beyond what can be plausibly afforded. Therefore, panels should only be used to add context to currency measurements, which should instead be based on large-scale, passively-collected data sets.”

It stands to reason that the best way to formulate industry adoption of a media measurement currency is to gather interested experts together as a working group. Whether this is a consortium of industry organizations such as the MRC or something patterned along the lines of a European JIC, is up for discussion. As Andrew Brown of Andrew Brown Associates, noted, “All vendors no matter how good their data will need 3rd party verification. All players will need third party syndicated solutions to put their 1st party data in competitive context.”

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

 

Revenge, Confusion and Kumbayah at the TV of Tomorrow 2019 Conference

Between ATSC 3.0, Addressability, live programming such as news and sports and OTT, this year’s NYC TV of Tomorrow conference offered a great sense of anticipation regarding the future of media. From when I first attended the conference in 2012, the ecosystem has gone through a series of seismic changes, lurching forward in one area and contracting in another. Recall the first rumblings of Addressable? Now it is reaching critical mass. Remember 3D TV? Yeah, neither do I. This year, the prognosticators report the following:

Revenge of the Nerds

There is more data than ever which leads to much more complexity in how it is used. “There is a greater need for examining multiple data sources, rather than simply relying on one or two” stated Helen Katz, Senior Vice President and Director Global Analytics and Insights, Publicis. “Given the increased complexity in consumers’ media and purchase behavior over the past five years, buyers and sellers both need to look to more granular data to do their jobs effectively.”

To that end, Julian Zilberbrand Executive Vice President Audience Science, Viacom/CBS, got it right when he said, “If you don’t have your nerds, you’re dead.” Arming your company with the best talent in data science, research and analytics is a must to compete in this ever complex media ecosystem. I have been in the nerd sector of the industry for decades so this evolution in industry attitude is very welcome.

We Are All Confused

As frenetic and confusing as the change is for those who work in media, the world is equally so for the consumer. “There is consumer confusion about how to access content,” stated Julie DeTraglia, Head of Research, Hulu. “We went into homes and found that people don’t understand their own TV sets.” Natasha Hritzuk, Vice President Consumer Insights, WarnerMedia, added, “It is a challenge for consumers. People feel overwhelmed. They have to grapple with the device proliferation and the choice of content.”

Part of the confusion on the media side is the changing ways to do business. “The rules we grew up with are antiquated,” stated Peter Olsen, Executive Vice President Ad Sales, A+E Networks, “It was good when we started because TV didn’t have to sell itself,” but now there is more competition. And even current business rules are not as simple as we may think. Take, for example, calculating attribution. “When I view engaging content, I won’t switch to buy something. I will wait,” explained Radha Subramanyam, President and Chief Research and Analytics Officer, Viacom/CBS. “Half of TV impressions are not counted because they are time shifted. Tons of clients do attribution around live. But no one will stop in the middle of a great program to buy something, especially something expensive.”

A Media Kumbayah

For the first time in our history, there has been a partnering of not only frenemy companies who compete on the same side of the business but also those who compete across the negotiation table. Programmers, networks and content distributors are forming working open partnerships with agencies, brands and advertisers. This cross industry collaboration is a welcome advancement where agreed upon solutions can be facilitated and moved more quickly into market.

David Ernst, Vice President, Advanced TV and Digital Insights, A+E Networks, explained that, “We offer insights as to how well campaigns on our networks are driving results, driving KPIs, drive to the web or retail location. What is changing is the dynamic of media seller and buyer. Once at odds, we are now all in same boat. There is more collaboration with agencies.” Olsen is, “confident in the bigger picture that TV works and we need to get there fast. It will take a couple of years but when we put our heads together we find many solutions.”

Be Careful of Simple Solutions

To mitigate this confusion, there may be a temptation to enforce simple standardizable solutions. But this lack of nuance would be a mistake. Collecting all content into an app, for example, aggregates content from many properties which can be good but, recalling her past experience in CPG research, Hritzuk warned that, “We are on a point of inflection to become commoditized. I worry about commoditization of inventory.”

Bringing different datasets together can solve for the deficiencies in each. Tom Ziangus, Senior Vice President Research, AMC Networks, noted, “There is a level of granularity that we don’t have with Nielsen but a level of information on Individual viewers from Nielsen that we don’t have from big data,” he explained. However, bringing different datasets together is complicated. “We need to ‘de-babelize’ the dataset [into one common language],” noted Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom, “Or we can’t have same buying and selling combinations.” For Andrew Ward, President, Ampersand, the industry should, “move away from panel survey-based to deterministic.”

Remember too that we are not always seeking the same solutions. “PlutoTV is free so we are not competing for money but competing for time. People feel overwhelmed and confused over places to watch things. For many, Pluto is easy, like turning the TV on. We are not trying to get dollars out of people’s pockets. We are competing differently,” explained Colleen Fahey-Rush, Executive Vice President, Chief Research Officer, Viacom.

For Katz, she believes the industry will eventually come together to create a common data platform that incorporates data from multiple sources. How soon that will happen remains to be seen. Stay tuned for TVOT 2020.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

CBS's Radha Subramanyam Clarifies Today's Complex Data-Driven Ecosystem

When I first interviewed Radha Subramanyan in 2016, I described her as a "new breed of researcher, easily navigating between the two worlds of 'classical' research and the new discipline of data analytics." At the time, she was president of insights, research, and data analytics at iHeartMedia. Now that she has moved to television as chief research and analytics officer at CBS, she is also one of the leading industry figures in forming data insights.

Creating Content for an Evolving Audience
Subramanyam helms CBS Research at a time when the parameters of television are rapidly changing and expanding. Video transcends platforms and inhabits new devices; audiences are shifting traditional habits and developing new behaviors and purchasing patterns; and data tracks it all, unleashing a torrent of information that is at once illuminating and confusing. How do we best use data to form a full storyline of the viewer and their journey?

According to Subramanyam, TV still reigns supreme as one of the most popular content platforms. "It is front and center in people's lives," she says. "There are more shows being produced today than ever before and people are consuming more hours of quality content and premium video than they ever have."

This programming bounty is resulting in more hours spent on media and accelerating the speed with which viewers conveniently fit more video into their day. "The acceleration of time-shifting continues. Consumers watch what they want, when they want," Subramanyam explains, adding that this is leading to a rise in OTT and other platform options. "Players are coming in and out. It continues to evolve rapidly."

In response to the intense need for quality content across the ecosystem, CBS is producing plenty of premium content for its own properties, while also developing and producing hit shows for other networks and the major streaming service. "CBS is producing 94 shows today, up 20 percent from last year and 120 percent from five years ago," she says.

Evolving Research to Maintain Programming Dominance
When it comes to the primary focal point of any initiative, "it always starts with content," Subramanyam says, "because without great content you have nothing."

But content alone is not enough, she notes. You also need insightful research that will reveal the network's challenges and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses. Under Subramanyam's leadership, CBS is among the first to blend big data, new technology, and traditional research to to complement the development of new shows.

"We have always had a great legacy and investment in insights around content; specifically, testing around shows and other forms of creative. That remains a top priority," she says. "We also use every possible classic research technique," from dial testing to focus groups and neuroscience, "and we are all-in on artificial intelligence and machine learning."

Conducting Marketing Research to Understand Attribution
In addition to being a program creator, CBS is also a marketing organization and Subramanyam's department conducts a range of marketing research projects. "We are doubling down in a way that we have never done before to understand our campaigns across TV, digital, and social," she explains. "And we're generating attribution, not just for our clients and partners, but also for ourselves in our own marketing campaigns." Her work in marketing extends to insights from data-driven ad sales campaigns, as well.

Subramanyam's department measures more than the spots and dots of advertising. Ad creative is also an important consideration. "We know that without great creative and great spots, we won't have great results," she says. "So, we A/B and A/B/C test all of our spots all of the time. We optimize the creative with clients." From there, it is possible to measure the KPIs, such as awareness and intent to view. Subramanyam believes that by tweaking creative, brands can understand the immediate impact of an ad or campaign.

Maximizing Content Success by the Platform
Is content platform-specific? For Subramanyam, some rules apply across all great shows. "You need great characters, strong narrative arcs, and great talent," she asserts. But there are differences between networks, where one show will resonate on one network and not on another, "which may require brand-level tweaking."

That is within the premium video space. Outside of premium video, such as in digital and social, there has to be a different set of attributes according to the platform. "Individual talent needs to speak differently on Twitter versus Facebook versus Instagram," Subramanyam says. "And we use data to suggest what works best for what platform."

Advice for the Next Generation
Subramanyam and I share a similar outlook regarding a career in research. We both highly recommend it to today's college students. "I find it deeply fulfilling as a profession and it is an honor and a privilege to represent the actual customer to a brand and be a voice for that customer," she explains.

What we both love is that research today is creative and scientific, using both sides of the brain. Plus, "you have to be extremely nimble, be willing to change and course-correct as needed, and always be open to learning radically new skills," Subramanyam advises.

Her parting words to today's college students: "If that sounds like you, the world is your oyster. We will need far more analytics and insights professionals in the future than we need today."

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

TV Measurement in a Digital World. Let’s Discuss

In a highly fragmented media world, not only does the consumer feel at the cutting edge of media consumption, so does media measurement and attribution. How does the industry keep up? This dilemma was deconstructed at the Data Conference, part of TV Week NYC.

What is the Measurement Solution?

In searching for the solution to cross platform media measurement, the panel essentially described the problems in reaching a solution. Paul Lefort, Senior Vice President, Nielsen, noted, “No one solution will work in the long term.” But he believes that comparable metrics matter. “The interesting push in the past few months is the impressions-based approach,” he stated. “Impressions remove friction in process. If we only use ratings then we lose portions of our audience.”

For Radha Subramanyam, Chief Research and Analytics Officer, CBS, a hybrid approach is the best way to go with, “a combination of panel and other data.” But, she noted, there is still the issue of walled gardens. “What do you do with all of that data that sits outside?” she asked. “We need a holistic view because the market doesn’t care about walls or silos of data. Advertisers want the full picture.” The barrier to a holistic solution is a not technical one, she added, “It is will or leadership. We need to think bigger and have more cooperation. We need a fluid ecosystem. The tech easy but getting it done not easy.”

What About the Role of Panels?

Frank Comerford, Chief Revenue Officer and President of Commercial Operations, NBCU Owned Television Stations, listed a range of challenges. “Is a small panel accurately reflecting the audience we have?” he asked. “Is a big dataset reflecting our audience?” He explained that that if people aren’t in the right places in the data set, it will not produce the right information. In addition, “with a big data sample, there are walled gardens that are marking their own homework.”

Panels have both advantages and shortcomings. “Panels provide fundamental source of truth,” noted Subramanyam. “It allow customers and clients understand the households from which it is derived. It is also a source of diversity measurement and ensures an exact or accurate representation of those audiences. I believe in the fundamental need of panel to give us those things. But we also need the scale and stability of big data sets.”

“Panels can’t strive for behavioral but can strive for the demographic,” added Comerford.

Who Leads the Charge?

When it comes to deciding what is the most effective measurement and metric, who has the last word? 

Lefort believes that it is ultimately up to the advertiser, “if the advertiser is happy about what they have spent to get their results.” The good news is, “TV and digital are not as far apart as we pretend it is.”  They are complementary. “It is not TV versus Digital.”

Subramanyam concurred, “We are here to service the marketer and we need a healthy transparent market. There are lots of initiatives at work and a combination of them will lead to a new standard.” But, she added, “Consensus in standardization across media is essential. And people have to get comfortable in getting their data out there.”

Experimentation is Key

Measurement solutions should be a part of tracking attribution and there is a lot of experimentation going on in this area. At CBS, Subramanyam noted that, “We start by experimenting on ourselves and then offer the solutions to our marketers. Attribution, specifically in digital, is still in the early stages. It tends to be versions of last click. But there are lots of experiments.”

For Comerford the local markets tried a range of different attribution experiments with a “small sample on the buy in the local market. We track and see. We can prove that an ad that runs on TV is effective and multiplies the effect of local advertising. The last click did not necessarily get the sale but it might be the execution of sale. We have to see what led to that.”

The overall consensus is that the industry is now working together to find solutions. “The good news is that we are all talking,” concluded Subramanyam. All this results in greater cooperation and, “robust and positive discussion.”

 This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

The 4As Examine Media Measurement Priorities at Advertising Week

There is strength in numbers. And I don’t just mean that in terms of all of the data being gathered and transacted upon in our industry today. I also mean it to suggest that we need to work together - from networks to agencies to the range of other media oriented businesses - to finally solve for cross platform measurement.

The conversation on cross platform measurement has been going on for over a decade through the work of several media organizations. But, frankly, these were often siloed efforts that gathered fleeting attention and struggled for cohesive industry action... until now. The push for an industry standard cross platform measurement is not only gaining momentum, it is also consolidating efforts across cooperating media entities.

As part of Advertising Week, the 4As hosted a panel titled “Media Measurement Priorities” that covered the joint efforts of leading industry entities to facilitate cross platform measurement and to decide, as an industry, what media measurement needs to look like in this new media environment. “What we have now really doesn’t fit the bill,” noted Louis Jones, Executive Vice President, Media and Data, 4As. 

He added that, “We need to have a collaborative point of view,” that also takes into account the needs of agencies. From there, the 4As set out to coordinate the efforts of companies and organizations working on the issue and published a whitepaper titled, Media Measurement Priorities,” as the first salvo.  

The paper set the stage for discussion of the most important priorities from an agency’s perspective. 

Here are the top five:

      1.       Unduplicated Reach

      2.       Currency

      3.       Short term versus long term

      4.       Walled garden and identity graphs

      5.       Attribution

Agency Perspective

Even for these top priorities, there may be flexibility in the solution. Take, for example, Currency. Historically, the TV industry has transacted on a strict set of metrics for currency. For Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom Media Group, “We are in a world that is complicated enough that if everyone had access to the right underlying data, different partners could agree to trade on different metrics and that would be okay.” His point was that agencies seek impressions on specific target audiences and the way these impression are valued may vary across different platforms.

For Ed Gaffney, Managing Partner, Director of Implementation Research and Marketplace Analytics, GroupM, the currency just has to be well understood, transparent and stable. “We can have multiple currencies,” he explained, “We have them now,” with digital and TV and even within TV there are a range of metrics. “As long as everyone knows how they are counted, and can use that data, for both sellers and buyers, it works well.”

For Gaffney, Unduplicated Reach is critical to address waste. But the barrier, according to Steuer, is that the measurement currency for TV “is based on volumetrics and not real humans” and is delivered, “on the aggregate and not the individual. We need a census to tie together and understand device delivery to actual humans.”

Industry Perspective

In addition to agencies, there are businesses and organizations that are deeply involved in the measurement discussion. The MRC has been pivotal in establishing cross media measurement standards. George Ivie, Executive Director Media Ratings Council, explained that the MRC has been involved in a two year effort resulting in a brand new industry standard for video that was just released in early September. Three hundred 300 people and 175 companies participated. “There was a lot of discussion about measurement of exposure and how important it is as a building block to understand who saw your ads and how many times they saw it and the ability to de-duplicate,” he noted.

This standard provides the framework for equalizing the exposures across platforms and de-duplicating it across some general principles: Establishing a  common set of granularity, second to second level starting with counting impressions and then equalizing them as much as possible across the various video outlets, viewability, measurement and requiring invalid traffic and fraud filtering, the ability to measure people – demographics and targets – completes and duration weighted view of impressions so as to measure how long the viewable conditions persisted.

The reaction from the industry was both accepting and guarded. Radha Subramanyam, Chief Research and Analytics Officer, CBS, noted that measuring, “viewability is a good thing. Nobody wants invalid traffic. Duration is important. But the devil is in the details. Implementation versus theory – there is a big gap there.” Brian Smallwood, “Different advertisers are going to want to transact on different measures. This (MRC report) is one way of standardizing it but there are other parts of the ecosystem that want to trade or operate differently.”

If you ask me, an effort that has created the foundation for the trans- corporate cooperation today has been through CIMM. This organization has been working on universal content labeling to help stitch together content on various platforms and devices through Ad-ID and EIDR. Without a UPC-like code, there is no industry wide way to insure that content is accurately being captured wherever it airs. Jane Clarke, CEO and Managing Director, CIMM, noted.  “It is an evolving time in television and we don’t have a granular, nationally representative impressions-based TV measurement system in place right now,” she explained, because the data is siloed, behind walled gardens and not shared.

But, as there is strength in numbers, the first powerful step has now been taken. “The tech environment innovates. Technology improves. The standard is a first step in a long journey,” Ivie concluded.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com