The growth of data-driven media strategies and rise of streaming television has created a new canvas for brands to reach TV audiences, with advancements in technology, common standards, and central audience activation making it possible for advertisers to both target and measure on advanced audiences across multiple publishers, at scale. This year alone has seen historic growth of the TV advertising upfront marketplace, with the biggest increase to date of advanced audiences. TV’s transformation has accelerated as advertisers shift from buying on traditional linear gross rating points (GRP) to transacting using consistent ID-based audiences across all platforms.
As more data becomes available to brands, it is paramount that the foundation of TV advertising in the future is built with the privacy of consumer data at the forefront. It is to that end that we are pleased to announce today that Snowflake Ventures invested in OpenAP, the advanced advertising company bringing simplicity and scale to audience-based campaigns in television.
OpenAP Data Hub, Powered by Snowflake, is a technology solution that will provide advertisers with rich campaign data, cross-platform data to power more effective and targeted campaigns that put privacy at its core. By building the OpenAP Data Hub on the Snowflake Media Data Cloud, OpenAP and its customers will take advantage of Snowflake’s Global Data Clean Room capabilities, which allows them to share data while keeping their customers’ personal information hidden. Being able to securely share data with another organization means they can find matches and better target individual users, while maintaining the anonymity of those users.
With this partnership and investment in OpenAP, Snowflake becomes the first non-television publisher to take an ownership stake in the company, joining existing owners Fox, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery.
The backbone of the OpenAP Data Hub is the OpenID identity spine, a common identity framework for TV that makes it simple for advertisers to reach the right audience across both linear and digital viewing environments, stripping out the complexity from building modern TV campaigns. Audiences are onboarded and matched to the OpenID identity spine through OpenAP’s integrations with advertiser data partners, then distributed to any national TV publisher for execution. Linear delivery along with all digital delivery is resolved to OpenID audiences and advertisers receive cross-publisher and cross-platform measurement reporting from OpenAP, providing valuable insights into not just how many people were reached but specifically who was reached across screens.
The OpenAP Data Hub is a huge win for the TV advertising industry as it will make it easier and faster to upload and distribute data, facilitating more effective cross-publisher and cross-platform planning, targeting and measurement in privacy-safe environments. Advertisers will be a key beneficiary by gaining a much greater level of granularity and transparency into their campaigns and data, because they’re working with a common data definition across networks. That allows them to plan, target, and measure TV ad campaigns more effectively. And all parties can share data more simply and securely thanks to the Media Data Cloud’s built-in security, privacy and governance capabilities.
With the modern TV landscape continuing to evolve, the industry needs a more effective way to buy and sell advertising that better serves broadcasters, advertisers and viewers. The OpenAP Data Hub addresses this need and sets a new standard for how companies will interoperate with advertising data across different platforms in future.