OpenX, an omnichannel supply-side platform, this morning announced it is launching ‘TV by OpenX’, a product which the company says combines the best of linear and programmatic TV buying models, in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Australia. TV by OpenX pools direct-sourced connected TV (CTV) inventory from what it deems to be broadcast-quality publishers, which OpenX says is a first step towards true transparent, biddable CTV.
TV by OpenX launched in the US at the tail end of last year, under the label ‘TV+’, and OpenX says it’s had a successful start. Publishers using the product have seen a 22 percent increase in monetised impressions on average, according to the ad tech company. Alongside the international launch, TV by OpenX is getting new upgrades in the US, enabling buyers to curate inventory based on third-party data.
Refining CTV supply
Essentially, the product is an effort to create a marketplace for premium CTV inventory, offering clarity to buyers on what exactly it is their buying, while still enabling a biddable programmatic model.
The first part of this is filtering out any inventory which doesn’t really fit the ‘TV’ part of the ‘CTV’ label. Ad inventory on screensaver apps or gaming apps offered on CTV devices, and even some mobile inventory may be labelled by some vendors as CTV. But when this is included in a marketplace alongside ad inventory from a major streaming service, it makes buyers less sure of what they’re actually buying. Cutting out all of this CTV-adjacent inventory gives more clarity to buyers.
TV by OpenX also only sells direct-sourced inventory, cutting out resellers and ad networks. Again OpenX says this improves transparency and control for buyers, as well as for sellers who know exactly where their inventory is being sold. OpenX says it also provides log-level reporting across TV by OpenX, giving visibility to buyers on exactly where their ads ended up running.
OpenX’s bet with the product has been that giving buyers this extra transparency and confidence in CTV would lead to more investment in the space. And the fact that publishers using the product are seeing growth in monetised impressions suggests that this is the case.
The confidence aspect for sellers is also important. OpenX’s SVP of buyer development Matt Sattel said that the TV by OpenX model enables the company to partner with “the most premium publishers”, since they themselves are assured their inventory is only being sold alongside content of a similar standard. This again feeds back to buyers, making more premium inventory available in one place.
Catering to curation
In the US meanwhile, OpenX is launching what it describes as the ‘next phase’ of TV by OpenX, enabling buyers to curate inventory based on data covering audience profile, context, attention, and sustainability. OpenX says buyers can choose from one of over 250 data partners, including Captify, Samba TV, and TVision, to target an audience using OpenX’s cross-platform identity graph.
The ad tech company says this caters to brands and agencies who are increasingly investing in scatter (TV inventory which isn’t bought at the Upfronts) in order to buy closer to campaign activation. The curation model enables them to buy this inventory, optimised towards their campaign objectives using third-party data, via whichever demand-side platform (DSP) they want to use.
