OpenAP is aiming to make audience identity less confusing and more consistent for streaming and TV ad buyers across the fragmented landscape by bringing together multiple ID data sources in an interoperable, yet privacy-centric, architecture so that they can improve targeted reach and measurement.
The effort to standardize a framework for cross-platform campaign audience identity in a TV ecosystem where data often lives in silos or within companies’ own confines is happening through the debut of OpenAP’s new Open Identity, announced Tuesday.
Getting an accurate picture of identity as advertisers target audiences across services and screens and through different ID datasets is a challenge, but more consistency and confidence means advertisers could improve reach for target audiences and measurement to ensure their campaigns are getting watched by intended viewers.
Open Identity is an evolution of OpenAP’s TV identifier OpenID. It represents a federated identity data architecture that brings together ID data from publishers, buyers, internet service providers, and third-party ID data providers in a clean room environment. A key aim of Open Identity is to create consistency and accuracy of audiences for advertisers that are targeting and measuring streaming and cross-platform TV campaigns. The company is working to do this through an interoperable and standardized workflow so that identity is resolved consistently as it crosses various identity spaces in the advertising chain. It also gives publishers and advertisers a protected space to utilize and share respective identity data and that of partners, enabling them to define and control how ID data is used, starting with audience creation through to measurement.
OpenAP essentially is looking to build the pipes to enable multiple parties to reconcile various identity data sources from partners in an interoperable and protected environment, while also eliminating data hops that create waste. OpenAP hopes to help ease and streamline identity so that it’s there’s a clearer picture of audience ID across premium video campaigns.
Third-party identity providers initially signed on for Open Identity include Acxiom, DeepSync, Experian, LiveRamp and TransUnion. The ID solution is expected to go live in May 2025, at which time ID data from DeepSync, Experian and Transunion will be available within Open Identity to create audience segments and measure campaign exposures. Partners will be integrated on a rolling basis and Acxiom and LiveRamp audience data integrations are underway.
Publishers will also be contributing first-party identity data to the federated architecture, according to OpenAP. This allows them to easily sync IDs with all other partners participating and means they don’t need to do so individually with each partner. Publishers connecting ID data have not yet been named but the announcement did come with a joint statement endorsement from executives at Fox Advertising, NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery.
“We consistently hear from advertisers that they need better targeting and measurement in streaming and that it needs to be easy to see holistic campaign performance, regardless of buy type or screen. By working together to build Open Identity through the OpenAP infrastructure, identity data can be interoperable across the entire premium video ecosystem, while creating the ability for publishers and advertisers to have control of how data is used for streaming and cross-platform campaigns,” said Stephano Kim, chief strategy & operations officer at Fox; Ryan McConville, EVP & chief product officer, Advertising Platforms & Operations at NBCU; Travis Scoles, EVP of Advanced Advertising at Paramount; and David Porter, head of Ad Sales Research, Data, and Insights at WBD in a joint statement. “Getting the pipes in place will ensure consistency and transparency in audiences, and paves way for more innovation and effective measurement to continue to demonstrate that investment in premium video drives business outcomes.”
OpenAP said Open Identity will be used to power the company’s audience onboarding, distribution and reporting products. It touted the following key benefits for advertisers, data providers, publishers and measurement vendors:
- Minimizing waste and improving ad campaign efficiency by using multiple identity providers for ID translation to increase audience sizes and match rates
- Using real-time clean room ID translations to eliminate match rate issues that crop up from other methods of sharing identity data across multiple providers
- Create transparent and consistent householding by consistently defining and controlling the use of ID data from multiple providers when creating audience segments and measuring audience performance
Participating publishers and data providers will be able to connect their data sets to Open Identity through OpenAP’s federated data clean room product, the OpenAP Data Hub. From there, advertisers can create audiences using identity data across trusted datasets, without the need for additional crosswalks or a central identity spine.
Additionally, within the federated architecture and clean room environment, advertisers and publishers will be able to define the identity data providers that will be used on a campaign and control the business logic that determines how households are associated with targeting and measurement signals.
Eliminating hops for improved matching, targeted reach
Eliminating the need for additional so-called crosswalks is a key aspect to the federated architecture and the workflow standardization.
As an OpenAP spokesperson explained, typical advertising workflows require “crosswalks” – or the connection between identity providers for sharing information. Typically there are two kinds, one for the individual viewer ID and one for the household ID. These crosswalks are used to create audience segments for targeting as well as audience reporting and campaign measurement.
But in the current fragmented viewing, advertising and identity ecosystem, there are usually multiple -third-party aggregators that are used for matching IDs, targeting and resolution – all of which have different approaches and methodologies – creating duplication and loss of data when it comes to ensuring the right household watched for measurement purposes.
And with each data hop comes a loss in match rate, so the more in-betweens for two partners trying to utilize identity data, it generally results in a drop off in the audience size for targeted reach.
With Open Identity, it removes these intermediaries so the match rate is better and there’s less data loss and audience duplication. And OpenAP’s definition of “real-time” means that if two identity partners wanted to map or match their IDs they can do so in real-time in a clean room environment – versus the historical process, which would typically happen on a quarterly refresh or some other time frame in a secure environment.
OpenAP’s identity framework comes, as mentioned, multiple companies are looking to provide identity solutions. However, the focus here is on interoperability of multiple ID data sources in a protected environment, where there is no singular or central identity spine, for use in cross-platform and cross-publisher ad campaigns.
“With the proliferation of unique – and often competitive identity solutions, we believe there will not be a single universal identifier for TV advertising, so the need for transparency and optimized interoperability is critical for the sustainability of premium video,” an OpenAP spokesperson told StreamTV Insider.
OpenAP is also the company leading efforts behind the U.S. Joint Industry Committee, with a focus on advancing and standardizing requirements for alternate currencies used for transacting TV ad buying deals.