But that isn’t stopping the remaining members of OpenAP from launching in to a new phase with the project.

Whereas the initial incarnation of the group – founded by Fox, Viacom and what is now called WarnerMedia – was focused on harmonizing different providers’ descriptions of audience segments available for targeting, “OpenAP 2.0”, announced on Thursday, is “expanding the advanced audience platform into a centralized premium video marketplace with workflow automation for national linear and long-form digital video”, according to the announcement.

And it is doing so after developing the new platform with Accenture and FreeWheel, the Comcast-owned video ad-tech platform that is a sibling to NBCUniversal, which joined OpenAP alongside Univision in 2018.

How does this make OpenAP any different? Put simply, it extends the platform from just the targeting function in to buying execution, both at its own OpenAP.tv and through other demand-side platforms and APIs. Says the announcement:

“With OpenAP 2.0, buyers will now be able to build consistent, cross-publisher audience segments for both national linear and long-form digital video, and submit orders to activate these segments through a centralized cross-publisher marketplace.”

It will include analytics making clear pre-campaign performance projections and post-campaign delivery metrics, including total unduplicated reach, overall tCPM and total audience impressions.

Speaking to Beet.TV for this video interview in November 2018, John Halley, Viacom COO ad sales, said OpenAP at the time was at “phase one“.

“I think it’s very important that others join,” he said. “We’re going to be taking on other problems. We have a product roadmap that we’re developing internally, and we think within the next year or so, it should be out with some pretty exciting announcements and releases.”

In this interview with Beet.TV at the recent WideOrbit Connect conference, Viacom’s COO of Ad Sales recaps the progress of OpenAP, which began as an initiative of Fox, Viacom and Turner and offers observations on future growth based on current use by advertisers in several categories. Newer members include NBCUniversal and Univision.

A big impetus behind OpenAP was the fact that publishers had their own advanced-advertising products but the way they defined audiences differed.

“We were all using our own fusion methodologies to, say, come up with an in-target segment list for movie enthusiasts. It was defined differently. The response from buyers was “I’m not buying the same thing.” By providing the “element of currency” that had been missing, OpenAP unified audience target definitions, according to Halley.

The platform has a tool that allows advertisers or agencies to define their target segments using “a wide variety of data sets, and then share that segment across multiple publishes who will then guarantee the buy against that common audience definition,” Halley says.

“This allows buyers the opportunity to look at publishers on a relative basis so they can evaluate share and how much they’re willing to pay for advanced segments. It has done a great deal to provide momentum around the volume of investment in advanced advertising.”

Still, these are still the “very early stages,” says Halley, noting that for some advertisers, advanced buying “is exactly where they should be.” Examples are response-based advertisers and categories like studios, automotive and quick-serve restaurants. One thing they have in common is “they tend to work a lot with data in the first place. They tend to be predisposed to buy it because they have the capabilities in-house to activate in that fashion.”

Over time, as other kinds of consumer products become more data-centric, “you’re going to see an increase in the buying against advanced segments. I would also say that this is really prep for an addressable marketplace, where we’re going to be matching advanced audience segments on a one-to-one basis more broadly.”

Halley places OpenAP’s combined member footprint at 50% of the domestic television impression supply, “so we do think feel like we’re at a critical mass as it is. But I would expect there to be additional key publishers joining the consortium in the near term. We’re going to be taking on other problems. I would look for other kinds of ease of buying type solutions coming up in the near term.”

This video is part of a Beet.TV series on advanced TV produced at the WideOrbit Connect conference. WideOrbit is the sponsor of this series. Please find more videos here.