Discovery invests in OpenAP to accelerate growth of advanced TV

Dive Brief:

Discovery Inc. will become a minority owner of advanced advertising company OpenAP, according to a press release. Fox, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS are also minority owners in the joint venture.
The deal looks to strengthen audience-based ad buying, alternative currency standards and cross-platform identity, measurement and planning. The investment follows previous partnerships between Discovery and OpenAP, with the media conglomerate integrating with OpenAP's OpenID and teaming on the launch of cross-platform measurement framework XPm.
Discovery's investment adds scale to the overall market for advanced TV. OpenAP works with more than 100 advertisers and expects 140% year-over-year growth in publisher-driven ad sales in 2022.

Dive Insight:

Discovery joins Fox, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS as a minority owner of OpenAP, an advanced advertising company that allows marketers to target audiences and measure campaigns across linear and digital viewing environments. The investment by the owner of TV channels including HGTV, Food Network and TLC demonstrates its commitment to OpenAP's offerings, which could become more attractive amid a continuing tightening of the ad-targeting landscape and scrutiny of legacy audience measurement company Nielsen.

"Discovery's commitment further validates OpenAP's mission and builds on the success and scale of our collective organizations work to build a more advanced model for TV advertising that focuses on audiences. OpenAP has been a catalyst for bringing programmers and marketers together to change the model, and we're proud to now have Discovery join us to accelerate these efforts," Fox, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS executives said in a joint statement.

Discovery previously integrated with OpenID solution, a unique identifier that seeks to enable audience resolution and cross-platform capabilities for advertisers, which OpenAP launched in April 2021. GroupM, Dentsu, Omnicom Media Group, Haworth Marketing + Media and Horizon Media were the first agencies to integrate with OpenID, putting considerable weight behind the effort. In addition, Discovery backed XPm, a cross-platform measurement framework built on OpenID that launched in December 2021.

Along with backing OpenID, some media giants have unveiled their own first-party data solutions as marketers prepare for the demise of third-party cookies and other identifiers. Last week, one of Discovery's partners in OpenAP, NBCUniversal, debuted NBCUnified to bring together first-party data from across its portfolio of TV networks, streamers, theme parks and more. Disney last year also rolled out a data-driven plan to unify its advertising sales among digital and linear screens.

Discovery's investment in advanced TV comes as the company is poised to merge with WarnerMedia in a $43 billion deal that is expected to shift the streaming landscape and create a new player on the marketing landscape.