Consortium of media, technology companies tackles need for addressable TV ad standards

Dive Brief:

Smart TV company Vizio and several media and technology companies have formed Project OAR (Open Addressable Ready), a consortium to develop new standards for addressable advertising for connected TV (CTV), according to a news release.
Along with Vizio, the consortium includes Disney’s Media Networks, Turner, Xandr, Comcast's FreeWheel and NBCUniversal, CBS, Discovery, Hearst Television, AMC Networks and Inscape. It aims to help TV programmers and platforms deliver more relevant ad experiences within linear and on-demand formats on smart TVs and better monetize TV impressions.
In separate news, entertainment technology company TiVo and media activation group 4INFO will partner on data-driven audience targeting and insights for the over-the-top (OTT)/connected TV category, according to a news release shared with Marketing Dive. The 4INFO Custom Connected Identity Map helps brands make data and audiences addressable and extendable beyond their current footprint of TV and digital media, using mobile ad IDs and IP addresses.

Dive Insight:

The Project OAR consortium and TiVo-4INFO partnership underscore how the market for OTT/CTV ads is growing and how advertisers are looking for ways to better deliver relevant ads to streaming audiences and measure results. The new consortium hopes to bring standardization to ad impression measurement and help marketers determine ROI for their OTT and CTV ad buys, which will become increasingly important as the rate of cord cutting continues to grow, with marketers investing more in OTT and CTV to reach audiences, as traditional TV viewership has been declining.

In 2018, it was projected that 80% of U.S. households would be reachable through OTT last year, according to Magna forecasts. Ad spending on OTT was projected to increase 40% to $2 billion in 2018, with addressable TV spend reaching $800 million. Connected TV ad requests jumped 1,640% year-over-year in 2018, with CTV request reaching 30 billion in November 2018 compared to 1.7 billion the previous year, according to Beachfront data. Roku, Amazon Fire TV, LG, Samsung TV, Vizio and Chromecast were the highest-ranked platforms in terms of ad requests.

Marketers also see high engagement levels for CTV ad buys, as completion rates average 90%, according to Beachfront. CTV ad impressions increased 193% from 2017 to 2018, accounting for 44% of impressions in Q4 2018, according to Extreme Reach research. In the quarter, premium publishers ran more than half of their impressions on CTV platforms, a 154% increase year-over year.