NEW YORK – Big name U.S. media and technology companies as well as smart TV company VIZIO are teaming up to develop and deploy a new, open standard for addressable advertising on connected TVs.
Dubbed "Project OAR" for Open Addressable Ready, the consortium said Wednesday that it is working to define technical standards for TV programmers and platforms to deliver more relevant advertising experiences within linear and on-demand formats on smart TVs. The goal of the initiative is to provide ad-inventory owners, whether programmers or distributors, the technical means to better monetize every TV impression through segment-based audience targets and addressable insertion while utilizing industry privacy best practices.
With oversight from a committee comprised of representatives from Disney's Media Networks (ABC, ESPN and Freeform), Comcast's FreeWheel and NBCUniversal, Discovery, CBS, Xandr, Turner, Hearst Television and AMC Networks, the technology will be developed by Inscape, the TV ACR data company owned by VIZIO.
"The standard will define the baseline for ad delivery, impression verification and privacy compliance, but networks will have plenty of room to create unique and enriched advertising experiences," said Jodie McAfee, SVP at Inscape, in the news release. "We are making this flexible enough to enable interactivity and other bells and whistles that have yet to be imagined."
With development now underway, the consortium added that it plans to have a working product to showcase this spring with full deployment targeted for early 2020.
