The two media network groups join the consortium on the heels of the group reaching consensus for the measurement and technical specifications for the management and delivery of addressable ads across all forms of television.
At this year’s CES event in January, members of Project OAR showcased specs around linear dynamic ad insertion, ad engine integration capabilities with TV’s major ad delivery and enablement engines, and since then they have been pushing software and firmware updates to over 14 million smart TVs.
The consortium, which counted CBS Networks as a standalone founding member prior to merging with Viacom, now has ViacomCBS’ entire TV footprint represented, including Nickelodeon, BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Paramount Network, TV Land, VH1 and more. “We know the future of TV requires a smarter, more relevant approach to ad experiences,” said Mike Dean, SVP of advanced advertising at ViacomCBS, and one of the founding executives of OAR. “Giving the entire ViacomCBS portfolio representation inside of OAR underscores the serious investment we are making in the future of better programming and ad experiences.”
Additionally, Scripps, which operates 60 local TV stations in 42 markets across the US, is implementing addressable advertising across a growing footprint of local OTT apps and joins OAR at a time when local broadcast advertising is undergoing a transformation. “Addressable advertising is a natural fit for Scripps because we have been early to understand and monetise digital and other technology platforms,” said Kerry Oslund, Scripps vice president of strategy and business development. “Supporting open standards for dynamic advertising in 1.0 and 3.0 broadcast television is a natural extension of our work as well as our mission to serve our audiences and advertisers on every media platform. We also are pleased to partner with the country’s most watched and respected TV companies and ad agencies on this initiative.”
OAR network members recently showcased the technology standard working on a frame-perfect basis in live linear TV with a variety of technology and ad engine companies, including FreeWheel, Google Ad Manager, Xandr, Innovid, INVIDI and Crystal, all successfully utilizing the open standard for dynamic ad insertion.
The consortium also counts Vizio, Inscape, Disney's Media Networks, Comcast's FreeWheel, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia, Discovery and AMC Networks among its founding members.
Sources: Advanced Television, FierceVideo.
From Forbes:
Why Addressable Advertising Is Finally Getting Closer To Mass Adoption
Talk to most people in the television industry and they’ll tell you that addressable advertising is all but inevitable.
It’s the “when will that actually happen” part they’re not too sure about.
Addressable advertising, where different households watching the same program are served different ads, has been around for a while now and people have been predicting its inevitability for almost as long
It was initially available through certain MVPDs, both on the two minutes per hour they got from the networks, and on their VOD inventory.
It’s also available on every app in the fast-growing OTT category, which makes sense given that OTT inventory is almost exclusively watched on a time-shifted basis.
Where it hasn’t been available however, is on network linear TV. Which, even with the shift to OTT viewing, is still where the overwhelming majority of Americans see TV commercials.
The “why” on that is a great example of the challenges facing the industry today.
It’s not that it's technologically impossible to run addressable advertising on linear network TV, or that the data isn’t there to target the ads properly.
MVPDs and vMVPDs know exactly which households are watching which shows at any given moment and could easily use the same software that allows them to run addressable ads during their own two minutes of ad time to run addressable during the networks own ad pods.
The problem, rather, is that the networks do not trust the MVPDs to have control over such granular data about their viewers and their advertising because (a) they don’t want to give the MVPDs any potential advantage during the next round of carriage fee negotiations and (b) networks and MVPDs are like cats and dogs and are just not wired to work together.
Seeing that impasse, several players have attempted to find a way around it.
There’s Project OAR, a consortium helmed by VIZIO, that is creating a series of standards around inserting ads as overlays using ACR data from smart TVs.
Nielsen has a similar project in the works, also using smart TV overlays.
Both solutions are in the test phase right now (and have been since January) and both have recent announcements that indicate the industry sees what they’re doing as a good idea and is getting behind them.
Nielsen welcomed Univision to the beta test they are currently running for their solution, and Project OAR, which is actually running a live beta, added on the Scripps group of local stations, as well as the entire ViacomCBS network roster, a list that includes BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Network, TV Land and VH1. (Founding member CBS was already on board.)
And in related news, Ampersand, which is jointly owned by Comcast, Charter and Cox, announced that it would be selling Verizon FIOS’s addressable inventory.
(This is of note as it makes it ever so slightly easier for advertisers to reach their entire audience with a single buy, which is, after all, the ultimate goal.)
Back to linear however, the Project OAR announcement was significant in that Scripps is one of the first local broadcasting groups to sign up for the consortium.
Scripps, which operates 60 local TV stations in 42 markets across the U.S., is implementing addressable advertising across a growing footprint of local OTT apps and joins OAR at a time when local broadcast advertising is undergoing a transformation, as well as a renaissance of sorts, as viewers turn to local station news shows to get updates on the Covid 19 pandemic.
“Addressable advertising is a natural fit for Scripps because we have been early to understand and monetize digital and other technology platforms,” said Kerry Oslund, Scripps vice president of strategy and business development.
“We consider this just another tool in our tool set. Depending on what the advertiser or the agency is trying to accomplish, we want to give them the right set of tools to work with. If a high degree or a higher degree of addressability is what they need, then we want to be able to offer that.”
Addressable and the Pandemic
If there is any upside to the pandemic, it’s that it has forced many industries to more rapidly implement innovations they’d been dragging their feet about, the television industry included.
For TV, addressable advertising will be particularly important as we are likely to go through what’s being called “the Hammer and the Dance” where different states and regions slowly open up and are then shut down again by new outbreaks. This means that advertisers will need to be able to target different ads to different regions and addressable is the best way for them to do so.
The other impetus for addressable has been the rapid explosion in ad-supported OTT viewing, both on the FASTS (free ad-supported streaming TV services) and the Flixes (the multibillion dollar subscription services.)
Marketers who want to be able to maintain some level of consistency in their ad buys and avoid having to deal with dozens of vendors, are looking for a way to make that happen and the more places addressable advertising is available—including linear—the easier it is for them to make that happen.
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