Discovery said on Monday that it has agreed to invest and become a minority owner of OpenAP, the advanced advertising joint venture company created by several media industry giants.
Discovery joins Fox Corp., Comcast’s NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS in the joint venture whose goal is to bring “simplicity and scale to audience-based campaigns in television.”
Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Discovery will have two representatives on OpenAP’s board of directors: Jon Steinlauf, its chief U.S. advertising sales officer, and Jim Keller, executive vp, digital ad sales and advanced advertising.
Discovery involvement comes as media giants look for improved audience measurement and work to leverage audience data and insights in their advertising sales businesses.
“The investment signals an expansion of Discovery’s existing relationship with OpenAP, having integrated with the central TV identity spine, OpenID, in April 2021 and more recently partnering with OpenAP on the launch of XPm, the TV publisher backed cross-platform measurement framework,” the companies said. “Discovery will be able to contribute to OpenAP’s corporate strategy and product roadmap, while gaining further operational and technical efficiencies by activating audiences centrally through OpenAP.”
For OpenAP, “it will help further its ability to grow the overall market for audience-based advertising and expand the breadth and scale of its services across cross-platform identity, measurement and planning,” the parties also said.
“Discovery is excited to take an active role shaping the future of advanced audience buying,” said Keller. “Given our current momentum, influence and growth of audience-based sales, we believe Discovery can help further the work OpenAP has been doing to initiate meaningful change in the market.”
“Discovery has long been a pioneer of TV entertainment with its iconic portfolio of content and direct-to-consumer experiences people love. The last two years have demonstrated the force of change that can happen when we take an audience-first approach to reimagining TV advertising for media owners, advertisers and consumers alike,” said David Levy, CEO of OpenAP.
In a joint statement, Dan Callahan, senior vp, data strategy and sales innovation at Fox, Krishan Bhatia, president & chief business officer at NBCUniversal, and John Halley, COO, advertising revenue at ViacomCBS, said: “Discovery’s commitment further validates OpenAP’s mission and builds on the success and scale of our collective organizations work to build a more advanced model for TV advertising that focuses on audiences. OpenAP has been a catalyst for bringing programmers and marketers together to change the model, and we’re proud to now have Discovery join us to accelerate these efforts.”
