Project OAR, the consortium working toward standard protocols for linear and VOD advertising on smart TVs, has begun ad engine integrations with the key players.
The consortium, which works closely with TV maker Vizio, has agreed to technical specifications and is now implementing technical integrations with Comcast’s FreeWheel, Google Ad Manager, Xandr and INVIDI.
Vizio has also started pushing software and firmware updates to more than 13 million smart TVs across the U.S. to enable dynamic ad insertion.
“We have effectively rolled out the hardest parts of dynamic advertising into the TV sets, and now members can work on building infrastructure for deploying, managing and selling dynamic ads,” said Zeev Neumeier, founder of Inscape, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vizio, in a statement.
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In the meantime, the Project OAR measurement subgroup, composed of large agencies and TV programmers, has completed the technical specifications for measurement of dynamic inventory.
“The trick is not how we measure addressable inventory but how the addition of new measurement specifications can help to unify dynamic inventory with traditional linear ad exposures,” said Helen Katz, senior vice president and director of global insights and analytics for Publicis Groupe, in a statement.
“The industry must deliver the scale that advertisers need to use addressable TV effectively. Project OAR is a great example of the industry rising up to meet this challenge and FreeWheel is proud to be a part of the solution,” said Dave Clark, general manager of FreeWheel, in a statement. “Whether an MVPD, programmer, smart TV manufacturer or technology provider, we will all benefit from making addressability happen.”
Project Open Addressable Ready was formed in 2018 by founding members including CBS, Disney’s Media Networks, FreeWheel, NBCUniversal, Xandr, WarnerMedia, Discovery, Hearst Television, AMC Networks, Vizio and Inscape. The consortium provides technical specifications and best-practice provisions for the selling, targeting and measurement of TV advertising within privacy-compliant TV environments and is open to content providers and OEMs.