OpenAP said advertisers can now buy commercials programmatically on linear TV and digital video using OpenID audiences.

GroupM is the first agency to take advantage of OpenID’s programmatic capabilities.

The OpenID audiences have been integrated into three supply-side platforms —FreeWheel, Magnite and Xandr Monetize — giving buyers access to premium inventory from multiple programmers. 

Also: Pedigree, MediaCom, OpenAP Win Advanced Advertising Innovation Award For Best Target Market Definition

“The growth of cross-screen viewing will only continue to accelerate, and agency buying teams need to be able to view the performance of a campaign in totality – regardless of how they bought or where the video was consumed,” OpenAP chief business officer Chris LoRusso said. “Our sell-side partners have invested heavily in automating buying channels, and by extending the reach of OpenID to programmatic, we’re breaking down the silos that exist between linear and digital and buying teams and are making it easy and simple for an advertiser to maximize their spend across the entire premium video footprint.”

OpenAP was founded in 2017 by Fox, Turner and Viacom to create a standardized way for media buyers to define target audiences one time and use that definition to buy ads from multiple programmers. OpenAP shifted from being a consortium to an advanced advertising company and is now owned by Fox, NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery.

“It is imperative that we, as an industry, use the technology at our disposal today to simplify and optimize all aspects of video advertising for the betterment of advertisers and the overall consumer-ad experience,” said Esra Bacher, managing partner of programmatic investment at GroupM. “The interoperability of the OpenID spine with SSPs like Magnite will add further fuel to GroupM’s Premium Marketplace and help us start to resolve some of the fragmentation that has existed across the media ecosystem.”

OpenAP last year established OpenID, an identity framework accepted by the majority of media buyers and sellers, and XPm, which gives advertisers cross-platform campaign metrics from a menu of measurement companies.

“We’re committed to solving for fragmentation across the premium video ecosystem and partnering with those who can help further interoperability across television,” FreeWheel VP, supply strategic relationships Misha Williams said. “By continuing to work with Open AP and enabling programmatic delivery of OpenID through FreeWheel, we’re making it easier for advertisers to unify their audience delivery across all premium video. For advertisers and publishers that choose to transact via OpenID, this simplifies the ability to target and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.”

“OpenID represents a major breakthrough for industry-wide efforts to unify linear-digital audience activation and measurement,“ Matt McLeggon, senior VP, advanced solutions at Magnite said. “As viewers shift to CTV and OTT, buyers have increasingly turned their attention to programmatic as a way to reach digital audiences with greater efficiency. Magnite’s ubiquitous reach in CTV will amplify advertisers’ ability to combine the operational efficiency of programmatic with the power of cross-platform reach and measurement.”

Xandr head of enterprise sales and partnerships Tom Koch added: “As the industry continues to grow investment in CTV, it has become paramount that buyers can identify and reach viewers wherever they are engaging with content while approaching video with a truly screen-agnostic lens. We’re excited to expand our partnership with OpenAP to enable the OpenID for programmatic, unlocking new opportunities for buyers to extend the reach of their linear audiences in digital channels with our premium CTV partners who trust Xandr’s Monetize SSP to help maximize their yield.” ■

Kroger Precision Marketing, the retail media business of supermarket giant Kroger, has opened its programmatic marketplace, enabling video and connected TV buyers to target ads using shopping data on consumer packaged goods.

The data is being made available to advertisers through inventory suppliers including Magnite, OpenX, PubMatic and Xandr.

“Streaming is the number-one way people consume TV today,” says Cara Pratt, Senior Vice President, Kroger Precision Marketing. “That means the majority of TV viewing hours can now be optimized in the programmatic environment. Our retail data precisely reaches households – such as lapsed or infrequent brand buyers – and then matches advertising exposure to store sales to measure brand impact.” 

Also Read: Roku, Xandr to Use Kroger Data to Target Ads

Kroger says people from 60 million households use its stores. 

Kroger Precision Marketing began making its data available to marketers five years ago and launched its self-service marketplace in 2021. Other retainers including Walmart and Target also enable marketers to use their retail data to hone their media plans.

“The scale and quality of Kroger’s first-party data has enabled us to optimize CTV delivery for our advertisers against actual stores sales. We are effectively driving in store sales via television in a tangible way,” said Kelly Metz, Managing Director, Advanced TV at Omnicom Media Group.

The new programmatic capability lets advertisers use retail sales data to reach relevant CTV and video households and gives advertisers access to premium CTV and video inventory in a centralized private marketplace, Kroger Precision Marketing said. It also enable campaign management based on attributable retail sales and household penetration.

“Our expansion into CTV and video demonstrates how retail media is driving greater accountability across the entire media supply chain,” says Pratt. “We’re proud to be working closely with brands and agencies as we make their programmatic advertising investments more effective and efficient.”  ■

Netflix’s choice of Microsoft to help it get into the advertising business came as a bit of a surprise, but Wall Street analysts and ad-tech industry insiders had mostly positive reactions to the choice.

Microsoft isn’t in the TV industry in a big way now, and that might be one of the reasons why it was attractive to Netflix: no point in getting in bed with a competitor. And Microsoft’s decision to take advanced advertising company Xandr off AT&T’s hands suddenly looks like a pretty good deal.

Of course the devil is in the details and it remains to be seen just how the Netflix-Microsoft relationship plays out. It could be short term until Netflix buys or builds its own capabilities. Or the two could be in it for the long term. Could there be a marriage in the future? Some observers raised the possibility of Microsoft acquiring Netflix down the line.

Matthew Swanson, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, noted that surprise was the initial feedback he was getting from investors and ad industry insiders.

“While Microsoft has a history in advertising with Bing and LinkedIn, they do not have an established presence within CTV and additionally are missing an established salesforce and ad-server for the market,” Swanson noted.

“The reasons this announcement was a surprise may be the same reasons that Microsoft was selected, notably compared to Google, Amazon or NBCUniversal, Microsoft does not have conflicting inventory that competes directly with Netflix. Additionally, the recent acquisition of Xandr has strengthened the company's SSP positioning with Microsoft emphasizing the privacy focus of the acquisition, which appears to also appeal to Netflix from the press release," Swanson said.

Swanson added that the addition of premium inventory to the market from Netflix “should be a positive for the broader CTV market, increasing competition and accentuating the value added services of these providers as demand shifts from direct sales towards reserved and open auctions as the supply/demand curves find a new equilibrium.”

Daniel Salmon, BMO Capital Markets also expected Xandr to “play a key role” as Microsoft works to sell Netflix AVOD inventory. He said Netflix could initially take advantage of Xandr’s Monetize platform.

Netflix will be reporting its second-quarter earnings next week, following up on the bomb it dropped on Wall Street last quarter when it disclosed a drop in subscribers. Netflix’s stock plunged, taking other media companies in the streaming business with it. The subscription shock also prompted Netflix’s about-face on advertising.

Salmon said he'd like to see Netflix answer some questions about advertising as part of its earning report. Among them: What is your short and long-term strategy for the ad-supported subscription plan? What is the timeline for introducing the ad experience? What does the partnership with Microsoft entail? Where do you plan to launch the ad-support first? Is it important for Netflix to launch in the U.S. before the 2023 Newfronts/Upfronts? 

Some execs in the ad-supported streaming business continue to see plans for Netflix and Disney Plus to air commercials as a boon for the industry. They saw the selection of Microsoft as a way for those benefits to be realized quickly.

"Netflix's entry into the advertising game is a huge win for consumers, advertisers, and its own opportunity for growth. Selecting Microsoft as its partner is a smart strategic decision that provides Netflix with the proven advertising technology and a turnkey advertising solution that already has substantial scale without building a dependency on a platform owned by a streaming competitor,” said Ashwin Navin, CEO and co-founder of Samba TV.

“At its roots Netflix is a technology company -- so it's no surprise that they lead with that experience in solving for the future,” said Scott Schiller, global chief commercial officer at EMX. “For Microsoft, it's the next big move in continuing to unite its gaming, and Xandr technology divisions with cloud-based advertising solutions. And who knows what's next for the two companies?”

Nicole Scaglione, VP, OTT and CTV Business at PubMatic, said the deal highlighted the opportunity in AVOD.

“For Netflix to fully realize their monetization potential, they will need to engage with a lot of technology and buying partners across the ecosystem. Microsoft has relationships and scale across channels and platforms, along with experienced sales teams and great tech infrastructure that can help Netflix grow their ad business quickly. Microsoft and Xandr want what is best for brands, publishers and consumers and this aligns with PubMatic’s vision for ecosystem harmony," Scaglione said.

“Netflix has to focus on entering the ad business on strong footing,” said Matt Spiegel, executive VP, media & entertainment vertical, at TransUnion. “It is really important to show marketers right away that it is easy to work with them. That reality makes their ad-tech and ad sales partner a critical decision. While choosing Microsoft is at first look a surprising choice, it actually makes a lot of sense. By choosing Microsoft and Xandr it won’t have concerns of sharing business strategy with a partner that is also a competitor. Secondly, Netflix has a large global following and Microsoft has done a good job of serving as an advertising partner for media companies with significant inventory outside the U.S.”

James G. Brooks, CEO and founder of GlassView, said Netflix still faces challenges as it aims to incorporate ads into its product.

“Like its contemporaries, Netflix will have to balance keeping viewers tuned in while monetizing the platform,” Brooks said. “The best way to accomplish this is through rigorous attention to frequency management as well as serving contextually and demographically relevant ads. Netflix knows its audience -- after all, they did create one of the most sophisticated recommendation platforms based on audience interest -- so this should be a real opportunity for them rather than a challenge. I would also imagine that advertisers will be lining up to serve ads on Netflix, so there could be a dent in streaming revenues to competitors.” ■

In a terse announcement, AT&T said it completed the sale of its Xandr ad unit to Microsoft, further removing itself from its failed and costly foray into the media business.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but reports indicated that the price was about $1 billion.

The transaction does not include the advertising sales business of DirecTV, which was spun off by AT&T last year.

AT&T assembled Xandr to be an advanced advertising powerhouse designed to use data about the company‘s huge mobile phone and broadband customer base to sell targeted ads on DirecTV and digital platforms. 

When AT&T subsequently acquired Time Warner, that was supposed to give Xandr more inventory to work with. AT&T wound up spinning off what became WarnerMedia earlier this year to Discovery. 

AT&T paid about $1.5 billion for digital ad-buying platform AppNexus in 2016 and hired Brian Lesser from GroupM, who turned AT&T Advertising into Xandr, with a goal of becoming an advanced-TV powerhouse.

Lesser suddenly left Xandr in 2020 amid management changes at AT&T and WarnerMedia. Other top Xandr executives have also left the company.

When it announced the deal, Microsoft was expected to Xandr to help sell digital ads on several platforms, including its Xbox video game platform.

“With Xandr’s talent and technology, Microsoft can accelerate the delivery of its digital advertising and retail media solutions, shaping tomorrow’s digital ad marketplace into one that respects consumer privacy preferences, understands publishers’ relationships with consumers and helps advertisers meet their goals,“ Mikhail Parakhin, president of web experiences at Microsoft, said last year. ■

Xandr said it will make GumGum’s Verity contextual targeting and brand safety technology available to its clients.

“GumGum will be the first new contextual provider added to any major DSP in years, which signals the true shift to contextual that is happening in the industry today,” said William Merchan, GumGum’s head of Verity. “Expanding our partnership with Xandr to offer our accredited contextual technology directly in their platform is exciting and allows us to give advertisers what they want — a cookie-less solution that is proven, transparent and effective at scale.”

Last year, GumGum became the first independent third-party to achieve Media Rating Council accreditation for content level brand safety.

Also: Ad Tech Firm GumGum Gets $75 Million From Goldman Sachs

GumGum and Xandr have been working together since 2012 when GumGum's supply-side platform was connected to Xandr’s Invest DSP. Xandr is in the process of being sold by AT&T to Microsoft.

The new integration makes GumGum available through Xandr’s Invest DSP and Xandr Curate for prebid targeting. Through Xandr Curate, advertisers will be able to activate Verity on Monetize SSP supply on almost any DSP. Advertisers using Xandr’s Invest DSP will be able to apply GumGum’s contextual intelligence solution for brand safety, contextual segments, keywords, and sentiment to purposefully align their ads with relevant content to drive attention and brand recall.

Also: GumGum Streaming Overlay Ads Don’t Give Viewers a Break

“Many advertisers are integrating contextual targeting into their campaigns as they look to the future of digital advertising,” said Dylan McBride, global head of partnership at Xandr. “Our integration of Verity further enhances Xandr’s holistic identity offering by giving our buyers the ability to target their key audience, with a sophisticated pre-bid solution that allows for multi-purpose use cases including brand safety, IAB categorization, threat classification and sentiments expressed.” 

Working with Xandr will increase Verity’s scale. 

“We’ve worked with a few smaller DSPs in the past and wanted to give our clients the ability to use Verity technology across the open web, not just across GumGum products,“ Merchamnn said. “Now, our 150 agency partners and 700 brand partners will be able to use Verity in the Xandr DSP to work across other supply they are accessing.” 

GumGum will process more than 100 million pages per day and over 9 billion requests per day from Xandr alone. 

Merchan sees the sale of Xandr to Microsoft as a positive. “Microsoft has been one of the largest brand advertisers across GumGum over the last five years, it should only continue to strengthen the relationship between GumGum and Xandr,” he said. 

Verity uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect contextual signals.

Merchan said Verity, is the only contextual intelligence solution of its kind to combine natural language processing with computer vision to read all of the data signals in digital environments - text, image, audio, and video content - and make decisions around web content with human-like nuance.

“These deep learning tools target context rather than outdated behavioral signals that rely on personal data,” he said. ■

Xandr said it launched Inventory Library on its Invest demand-side platform that will make it easier for buyers to find connected TV inventory.

Inventory Library will be organized in catalogs with the premium video catalogs having more than 1,200 items in the U.S. Xandr plans to create catalogs covering more geographics, formats and supply sources.

Xandr is in the process of being sold by AT&T to Microsoft.

"The premium video ecosystem is fragmented, with most CTV inventory transacted through deals and many platforms developing proprietary deal marketplaces. As such, it is hard for buyers to discover and access relevant inventory in one place to enable their campaigns to scale. This is especially true for CTV and premium video supply," said Eric Hoffert, senior VP, video technology at Xandr.

"With a sell-side platform, direct relationships with publishers and many SSPs, and the leading deal curation platform, Xandr is uniquely positioned to offer buyers a seamless deal-buying experience. Inventory Library is deal buying the way it should be, as it offers a highly intuitive and visual design with greater visibility into deal inventory that ever before, taking easy of use to an entirely new level," Hoffert said.

Also: Xandr Invest Adds Inventory From A+E, Crown Media

Inventory Library reflects the industry's shift from open exchange to deals-based buying, providing brands safe, high-quality inventory at scale from Xandr Monetize and leading supply partners, Xandr said.

"We have found deal discovery very efficient and usable while remaining highly interactive utilizing Xandr's Inventory Library,” said Kevin Jones, VP of media buying, Digital Remedy. “We find the additional search options a huge bonus, for example finding specialty deals such as the Olympics, March Madness, and others. As Xandr expands its execution of our deal packages, we love the flexibility of adding them to either a Line Item or a deals list; it creates a very positive experience for all of our planning, activation, and optimization teams.” ■

Measurement and analytics company 605 said the Xandr will be using 605 Exchange Advanced Audiences ad currency for data-driven linear campaigns transacted on Xandr’s Monetize TV and Invest TV platforms.

The move comes as media companies and ad buyers explore alternatives to using Nielsen’s audience data as a basis for buying and selling ads.

Also: NBCU Recognizes More Measurement Companies as Nielsen Alternatives

“We are excited to bring 605 Exchange data to our TV platforms and play a role in advancing audience-based TV advertising,” said Jason Burke, VP of business development at Xandr. “The ability to define and connect with the right audience is critical to the advertisers, agencies and programmers looking to maximize investment outcomes for data-driven linear campaigns.” 

Xandr was launched as the advanced advertising unit of AT&T. The phone company has been getting rid of  its media assets and agreed to sell Xandr to Microsoft.

605, backed by the Dolan Family Ventures, announced plans to jump into the currency business last year. 

“We announced 605 Exchange in December 2021 with the intention of bringing features to the market throughout 2022. The launch of Advanced Audiences is a testament to our efforts and marks the first of many industry-leading measurement solutions we have in store,” said 605 founder and CEO Kristin Dolan. “We are delighted to be working with Xandr to give brands the ability to dynamically create granular audiences and execute buys against these customer segments through 605 Exchange."

Also: Five Years Later, Kristin Dolan’s 605 Is in a New Measurement World

605’s Advanced Audiences will initially be available for linear television. The product is customizable and takes advantage of 605’s deals with data providers including PlaceIQ, Catalina and Polk.

605 Exchange will facilitate the creation of Advanced Audiences, measuring the outcome, performance and optimization of campaigns using attribution from a common 605 data spine, the company said. These campaigns will serve as building blocks for future cross platform media media campaigns designed to drive full funnel performance.

605 also said it has launched an Open Partner Program to support 605 Exchange, allowing programmers, agencies and advertisers to closely collaborate with 605 to create an independent ecosystem with a stable, accurate, consistent and always-on medium of exchange for the trading of advertising.■

AT&T said Tuesday that it had found a buyer for its programmatic advertising unit Xandr in the form of software giant Microsoft, for an undisclosed sum.

Xandr was created after AT&T bought ad company AppNexus for $1.6 billion in 2018 and combined it with existing ad-tech operations. AT&T renamed the advertising unit  Xandr after its founder Alexander Graham Bell. 

Although AT&T said it would keep Xandr after the merger of its WarnerMedia Group with Discovery, speculation has been high that the ad business was on the block.  The unit had been on the block even before AT&T's surprise decision in May to spin off its WarnerMedia unit and merge it with Discovery Inc., a transaction that is still on the way to closing. Last year, Xandr CEO Brian Lesser and other senior executives left the company, and the unit's platform and media assets were split up, with the media assets merged into WarnerMedia. 

AT&T in February also sold a minority stake in its satellite-TV business, DirecTV, to TPG, pivoting toward streaming and further away from traditional pay TV. 

“Microsoft’s shared vision of empowering a free and open web and championing an open industry alternative via a global advertising marketplace makes it a great fit for Xandr. We look forward to using our innovative platform to help accelerate Microsoft’s digital advertising and retail media capabilities,” said Xandr’s EVP and GM Mike Welch in a press release.

The transaction is subject to closing conditions and regulatory reviews. Microsoft is expected to use Xandr’s technology to complement its current advertising offerings.

“With Xandr’s talent and technology, Microsoft can accelerate the delivery of its digital advertising and retail media solutions, shaping tomorrow’s digital ad marketplace into one that respects consumer privacy preferences, understands publishers’ relationships with consumers and helps advertisers meet their goals,“ said Microsoft president of Web Experiences Mikhail Parakhin in a press release. ■

Future Today, a streaming video company with channels including HappyKids, Fawesome and Filmrise, says working with AT&T’s Xandr unit is helping it cash in on the booming connected TV market.

Advertisers are shifting ad dollars to connected TV, but at the same time, the number of CTV players and the amount of content in the market has made it difficult for a smaller, independent players to attract programmatic buyers.

Xandr has worked with Future Today since 2018. Since then, Xandr has shifted from its original focus on digital video to connected TV. Working with the Xandr Monetize marketplace established this year, Future Now has been able to boost CTV revenue in the first half of 2021 by 200% compared to the first half of 2020, the companies said.

“It’s about being able to better monetize our inventory,” Vikrant Mathur, CEO of Future Today told Broadcasting+Cable.

Before getting together Future Today was heavily reliant on third parties as sources of demand. As CTV started to take off, “we saw an opportunity to invest more in the programmatic side of the monetization business,” Mathur said.

Also: Most Brands Plan To Spend More on CTV: Advertiser Perceptions

Most of Future Today’s ad sales for its entertainment programming is now done programmatically. Most of its kids business is done via direct sales.

When it first got together with Xandr, Future Today was looking to ensure and enforce quality standards on its platform, allow for new buyer targeting and grow revenue abroad.

“We have healthy relationships with most other DSPs, but with Xandr we’ve been able to do some cool things that we weren’t doing before and we’ve had good monetization,” Mathur said.

Xandr Monetize provided Future Today with robust ad controls that extended the decision-making process for which advertisers and types of ads are appropriate to show within specific inventory.

“When we look at the increase in monetization we’ve seen with Vikrant and Future Today, a lot of it has started ith our Premium Video Catalog,” said Bill Casper, director of partnerships and new business at Xandr.

Xandr’s Premium Video Catalog is designed to provide buyers access to always-on, one-to-one video and connected TV deals from top media owners and distributors across devices, content categories, formats and app types. Deals include the contextual data points and provide targeting and reporting.

Adding Future Today’s channels to the catalog helped buyers find those channels and, on the back end, understand how campaigns are performing. New advertisers can also get on the air a lot quicker buying programmatically than they can through a more traditional relationship.

“There’s wonderful technology, but there’s still a lot of conversations that go on with buyers about the premium content and how to filter through some of the noise that is digital a lot of the time,” Casper added. “So there’s old-fashioned boots on the ground that go along with the technology to help facilitate that.”

That makes having a close relationship with partners like Xandr important to Future Today.

“We think about CTV as the premium aspect of TV blended with digital targeting and monetization capabilities,” Mathur said. “It;s about passing the right signals. If we don’t share that information they’re not going to be able to provide the kind of user experience consumer have come to expect now with CTV being mainstream.”

Future Today and Xandr hope to continue to grow ad revenue together, Casper said Xandr is adding technology that will enable buyers to put their ads in specific ad breaks within shows and in specific slots within pods.

“Next year is going to be a big year for political, which should help contribute to the continued growth in programmatic as some traditional TV dollars shift to digital,” he said.

Mathur notes that viewers will also continue to move from traditional TV to streaming. “I foresee that trend to only accelerate going forward,” he said. “I think the dollars have to follow and programmatic is the big pipe through which a lot of this is going to be delivered.”■

Advertisers plan to spend more ad dollars on a variety of advanced advertising and new media options over the next 12 months, according to a new report from AT&T’s Xandr advertising unit.

According to a survey conducted for Xandr by Advertiser Perceptions, 58% said they would increase spending on data-driven linear TV. 

The survey found 53% putting more ad dollars into over-the-top and connected TV, 50% planning to boost addressable linear TV spending and 45% increasing spending on other forms of digital video.

Just 28% said they plan more spending on traditional linear TV.

Also Read: Advertisers Mostly Dissatisfied With Media Measurement, Survey Finds

Employing less-traditional forms of video isn’t easy for many advertisers.

“It is the golden age of premium video content for viewers, and the height of complexity for advertising decision-makers and their partners,” said Xandr’s 2021 Relevance Report covering the State of Convergence and Advanced TV.

The report said that buyers look at data-driven linear as a way to make traditional TV, often representing their largest budget, more efficient, partially for top-of-the-funnel marketing.

Three of four advertisers believe data-driven linear gives them the very best of TV and digital advertising.

"Some of the reported barriers to adoption of data-driven linear—unclear benefits, confusion about how data-driven linear works—are easily mitigated by partnerships with experts,” the report said.

Nearly every advertiser in the study saw benefits to automating OTT buys. The biggest benefits were earlier campaign targeting and optimization and better pricing.

But only about half of OTT/CTV budgets are allocated to programmatic buys. Respondents cited building and growing direct relationships with publishers, and the less familiar process as key challenges to programmatic OTT/CTV. 

All 357 respondents had to be buyers actively working with over-the-top, connected TV or linear television.

Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising company, said it launched Monetize TV, an audience-based selling platform.

With its self-service system, Monetize TV lets buyers access audience-based campaigns with some of the largest TV networks.

Programmers using Monetize TV include A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Crown Media Family Networks, Discovery, Disney Ad Sales and WarnerMedia.

Xandr is looking to have the platform handle converged TV and streaming campaigns in the future.

“As TV viewership moves to digital channels, buyers want the granular targeting and measurement benefits of digital on TV. As such, sellers need to be able to offer optimized proposals for advanced audience targets for their linear inventory,” said Mark Mitchell, VP, business development, TV platform, Xandr. “Monetize TV's effort to standardize audience-based transactions is essential to scaling the TV marketplace.”

AT&T is reportedly in talks to sell Xandr. The phone company has been moving to get out of the media business, having divested DirecTV and announcing plans to spin off WarnerMedia and sell it to Discovery.

Media owners can use Monetize TV to build audiences using Nielsen and first-party data, forecast viewership and generate optimized proposals across networks and dayparts.

“Discovery remains committed to providing our advertising partners with transactional flexibility across our premium content portfolio and massive audience reach," said Steve Silvestri, senior VP, audience solutions at Discovery. “The launch of Xandr's Monetize TV comes at a critical time, bringing advanced insights to the marketplace that expand the value of our inventory as we continue to move forward in audience-based TV advertising."

Transactions can be complete directly or through Xandr’s Invest TV platform.

“Xandr’s unified platform has been critical as we adopt buying strategies that go beyond the basic demographic data of linear TV,” said Larry Hunt, executive director, video investment at media agency Hearts and Science. “Through Monetize TV’s integration with Invest TV, we’re able to seamlessly scale audience-based buys across some of the largest media owners like Discovery, with standardized transactions and optimized proposals that best deliver the custom audience segments our clients want to reach.”

In a move likely to accelerate the buying of audience-based television campaigns, AT&T’s ad tech company Xandr has integrated OpenAP’s OpenID viewer identification system, enabling advertisers on its platform to build campaigns using inventory from all of the major TV companies.

OpenAP will accept campaigns planned with Xandr’s Invest TV platform. Invest TV will use several of OpenAP’s campaign building tools. Campaigns can be bought from the individual networks using Xandr’s transactional technology. It’s all expected to be ready for the start of the new TV season in the fourth quarter.

Most of the networks and most of the big buyers have already signed up for OpenID individually.

Campaigns based on target audiences--rather than the traditional age and sex based demographics--are usually more effective, which should translate into more revenue for TV networks as they compete with the digital media.

OpenAP was originally formed by Fox, Turner and Viacom to standardize the way advertisers define target audiences, making them easier to buy from competing networks.

OpenAP’s Open ID is designed to create a unified was of identifying viewers across networks and platforms.

Between the members of OpenAP, including Fox, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS and Univision, and clients of Xandr Invest such as WarnerMedia, Discovery Disney and A+E, nearly all of the TV industry is accounted for.

“The collaboration between Xandr and OpenAP is a gamechanger for both media buyers and sellers, removing friction that has existed with executing campaigns on advanced audiences at scale,” said Mike Welch, executive & GM of Xandr. “We built Invest TV to streamline and unify buying of advanced TV audiences, and we heard the message loud and clear that the ability to plan, buy and measure on the premium national TV footprint was critical. Xandr offers an automated access point to scaled reach in data-driven linear TV, and we’re thrilled to be working alongside industry innovator OpenAP to do it.”

Xandr works with a number of audience identification systems in order to accommodate users. “I could see this [Open ID] turning into a preferred identity solution across what I’ll call converged buying, when you want to buy across both linear television and digital,” Wench said. Xandr isn’t exclusively using OpenID, “but it’s definitely one we think is going to have a lot of traction and wanted to be a part of, for sure.”

Also Read: Xandr Publishes Guide to the Future of Identity for the Ad Industry

Being able to do data-driven linear TV campaigns gives Xandr something its tech-giant competitors can’t. “We’ve made a lot of progress on digital video and connected TV,” Welch said. “By offering data-driven linear at scale, we think it provides a pretty significant point of differentiation for Xandr.”

“A common identity for television is a critical foundation in allowing us to create an environment where sellers are able to deliver true cross-publisher and platform insights for advertisers. To do this at scale, however, ID-based audiences must be interoperable and ubiquitous with the platforms clients want to use,” said David Levey, CEO of OpenAP.

“We are thrilled to work with Xandr to bring the OpenID to Invest TV clients for use in linear cross-publisher campaigns, unlocking the ability to transact on a consistent OpenID audience across all major national publishers. We are committed to interoperability with the platforms and solutions that clients leverage for audience-based buying across the television ecosystem.”

Levy explained that previously, a buyer working with both OpenAP and Xandr had to work with two separate audiences. It was also difficult for Xandr users to access inventory from some OpenAP members. “Now you can actually build out a proposal across all national programmers, which is exciting. It’s something that we think is going to help move this space along. The more we can work together , the better it is for the TV ecosystem.”

He added that using consistent audience definitions is essential to getting an accurate read on how a campaign performs.

OpenAP launched OpenID in time for the upfronts and level said that several of the large media buying holding companies have used OpenID as part of their upfront discussions.

Xandr, the advanced advertising company still owned by AT&T, released an industry guide looking at ways for ad buyers and sellers to address how to identify consumers in a future without third-party cookies.

Cookies have been used in digital media to identify individual consumers by their internet usage, but changes in privacy laws and browser practices are rendering them less and less useful.

Also Read: AT&T Holds Onto Xandr Amid WarnerMedia-Discovery Mega Merger

The guide, entitled Shaping the Future of Identity, is designed to help businesses evaluate alternative identity solutions.

“As consumers spend more time engaging with content, their data privacy must remain a priority for the advertising industry at large,” said Amanda Tan, senior director, product management, Xandr. “The rapidly changing identity landscape has led the advertising industry to reach an inflection point, and both publishers and marketers are central to writing the next chapter. A collaborative approach driven by a core belief in the need for an open internet will be essential for the success for both buyers and sellers in the new era of digital advertising.”

Identity is especially important at a time when more content is available to consumers in ad free environments. In order to get consumers to choose to see and react to ads, they have to be more targeted and engaging.

At the same time, marketers need to adjust buying strategies to ensure their programmatic advertising investments remain effective and efficient.

Also Read: Xandr Creates CTV Guide For Buyers and Sellers

Xandr’s guide explores a number of alternative approaches to identity, including publisher provided IDs, industry IDs, clean-room technologies, contextual targeting, modeled solutions, curated marketplaces and browser/app frameworks.

Among its conclusions, Xandr notes that marketers much evaluate their options. 

“There are many considerations, and many more on the horizon, that span the spectrum of addressability from 1:1 addressable, where audiences can be matched across advertiser and publisher, to non-addressable, where no identity signals are available for matching audiences,” the guide said.

As for publishers, they must “rethink their monetization strategies, leveraging direct consumer relationships that enable premium content delivery that users are accustomed to. Buyers and sellers need to be ready to do some experimentation during this crucial transitional period.”

The good news, according to Xandr is that there is still time to prepare for this new era.

As for itself, Xandr said it has “a multi-faceted approach to identity solutions, to facilitate high-value transactions for buyers and sellers following the deprecation of third-party cookies and device IDs.

"We are laying the groundwork for agnostic interoperability for identifiers, so our clients can work flexibly with first-party data.”

As AT&T abruptly pivots from the media business with its somewhat shocking deal to spin off and merge WarnerMedia with Discovery Inc., it's conspicuously holding onto one asset: Xandr.

The advanced advertising unit, formerly known as AppNexus, was purchased by AT&T for $1.6 billion in 2018 as a complementary piece to the $85 billion Time Warner Inc. acquisition, meant to monetize and justify that larger media acquisition. 

AppNexus was absorbed into AT&T’s legacy addressable TV business AdWorks, and its core products were rebranded as Xandr Invest (DSP) and Xandr Monetize (SSP), noted AdExchanger, which reported earlier that AT&T was hanging onto Xandr.

Last year, Xandr CEO Brian Lesser and other senior executives left the company, and the unit's platform and media assets were split up, with the media assets merged into WarnerMedia. 

Spending on Xandr has reportedly soared of late, driven by connected TV. But AT&T started exploring the sale of the unit last year. 

On Monday morning, AT&T announced its intention to spin off WarnerMedia and merge it with Discovery for $43 billion in a combination of cash and debt securities.

AT&T’s Xandr advanced advertising unit, and TiVo made a deal that makes TiVo’s ad-supported connected TV inventory available to buyers in the Xandr Marketplace.

“By integrating with Xandr’s advanced technology platform, TiVo is furthering our commitment to providing advertising partners with the tools they need to effectively and efficiently communicate their marketing messages, at scale,” said Walt Horstman, senior VP of Monetization at TiVo, a subsidiary of Xperi Holding Corp. “Xandr’s end-to-end platform enables a direct and streamlined exchange with buyers, providing unique and heightened value as the CTV ecosystem grows in complexity.”

Also Read; Xandr Set to Support Multiple Consumer Identity Systems

Inventory included in the deal includes TiVo’s pre-roll and in-stream commercials across AVOD streaming services. 

“We’re excited to offer buyers in the Xandr Marketplace access to TiVo’s diverse content and inventory types as well as its highly engaged audiences,” said Alex Chatfield, VP, Marketplace development at Xandr. “Xandr is committed to providing buyers with a robust, transparent, and data-rich infrastructure of deals that unlocks net new targeting and increased access to premium CTV inventory at scale.”

AT&T’s Xandr said it will let buyers and sellers use three leading consumer identity systems for making transactions on its advanced advertising platform.

The three systems, The Trade Desk’s Unified ID, Europe’s netID and the LiveRamp Authenticated Identity Infrastructure have been developed as the digital world faces a cookieless world while conforming to privacy rules and regulations.

The identity schemes let advertisers on the Xandr platform target ad campaigns based on AT&T data capabilities.

“Xandr’s end-to-end platform uniquely meets the needs of our global client base as well as the broader industry, while maintaining high respect for consumer privacy,” said Ewa Maciukiewicz, Senior Director, Product Management, Xandr. “Xandr has taken a thoughtful and methodical approach to helping our clients navigate complex regulatory landscapes, while achieving business objectives. It is critical we  continue to ensure holistic reach across relevant audiences, seamless measurement and insights to support attribution.”

On Xandr’s platform, buyers will be able to utilize their identity providers of choice to drive targeting and frequency-capping strategies, the company said. .

Publishers will be able to leverage their first-party IDs and industry ID solutions across deal types in ad requests in order to monetize inventory without cookies or device IDs.

Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising and data unit, went through some changes last year.

CEO Brian Lesser and other senior executives left and its platform assets were split from its media assets and those media assets were merged into AT&T’s WarnerMedia. Xandr and WarnerMedia had already been working together, teaming up during the 2020 upfront, for example.

In an interview, Jason Brown, who had been chief revenue officer for Xandr and is now head of agency planning & strategy, addressable, for WarnerMedia Ad Sales, talks about what clients are looking for in terms of advanced advertising and what WarnerMedia can deliver.

B+C: How is what you’re offering different now that you’re part of WarnerMedia?

Jason Brown: Being part of WarnerMedia, it opens up a plethora of capabilities for our advertisers. Now we go to market with the best of premium content and premium brands and precision tactics. A lot of brands are very excited about this because we’re able to combine both.

B+C: What’s the benefit of having both?

JB: Because both premium content and precision live on top of our subscriber base and we have the exposure data for both upper-funnel awareness and lower-funnel precision campaigns, we’re able to show the impact of both together. And that’s frankly what many advertisers have been asking us for, for years. What is the right allocation of upper-funnel media to lower funnel? What type of creative should I use? Because we have all those assets under one roof, setting one identity, we can show the impact of both together and answer some of those questions.

B+C: Is there an example of how that worked for a client?

JB: We have an auto client that previous to our combination was buying a big branding campaign from WarnerMedia and field-event campaign from AT&T addressable. There were two separate buyers, two separate sellers, two separate back-end reports. No narrative together. Now we’re able to work with that particular brand as one entity combining upper funnel, lower funnel and working across a nine-month customer journey.

B+C: So in terms of spending, does one plus one equal more than two?

JB: It depends. But our point of view is that we want to get our customers the answers to their questions and let the data speak for itself, being fully transparent. Sometimes it might showcase that they should be spending more money on upper-funnel activities and less money in precision or vice versa.

B+C: What did the auto client end up doing?

JB: Frankly, they’re investing in both and I think the data shows they should probably start to invest a little bit more upper funnel.

B+C: Are you seeing a change in what clients are asking for now that you’re part of a larger organization?

JB: As it relates to addressable, there’s an expectation that the scope goes beyond the DirecTV footprint and that we extend addressable advertising to not only our streaming services with AT&T TV, but also curated WarnerMedia digital inventory. And so we’re starting to work on bringing that unique capability to our advertisers now that we’re a part of WarnerMedia.

The other thing is WarnerMedia mostly lives with linear TV buyers, who are graded on reach and GRP goals. So one of the new capabilities that has been trending is our ability to bring forward a reach extension product using addressable technology. By looking at linear campaigns and seeing which households and devices were under-served and targeting that cohort we can extend reach while also managing frequency and attaching that to linear campaigns. We just look at it as the second flavor of addressable.

B+C: After COVID-19’s impact on the market last year, is the addressable market growing?

JB: Because of COVID, brands have had to really quickly pivot to new strategies and they need to understand the impact of those new strategies. So they’ve been using addressable to not only reach their current customers or prospects but to understand. Like in the auto category, are customers going to my website, as opposed to the dealership’s? There’s a need for data and precision and attribution even for brands like toothpaste that want to reach people who are staying home.

B+C: So how much is the addressable marketing growing now?

JB: It’s back to double digits.

B+C: Are you able to do addressable advertising on the linear Turner channels, or is that somewhere down the road?

JB: We worked with Adcuratio to test national addressable back in the third quarter and we will continue to test. 2021 is really a testing year as we build that foundation for the future.

B+C: Will HBO Max extend the addressable footprint when the ad-supported erosion gets introduced next quarter?

JB: No comment.

B+C: Everyone’s doing upfront planning. How will your team fit into the larger WarnerMedia approach to the upfront?

JB: Last year, before the integration, we acted as one team to the marketplace, embodying what we felt was the right approach, which was to provide flexibility and trust to our partners. That won’t be different this year.

With linear TV viewing declining and streaming booming, AT&T Xandr advanced advertising unit has created a guide to CTV for buyers and sellers.

The advice comes from media companies and agencies from around the world, including GroupM, Omnicom, ViacomCBS and Philo.

After laying out many of the opportunities and challenges presented by CTV. Xandr concludes that buyers need to take a local approach.

”The growing opportunities of CTV are global, but only with a hyper local approach,” the guide said.

Buyers are also urged to strike an appropriate balance between TV and digital, especially as they learn about how to best deploy CTV.

“Buyers should embrace the inevitable convergence but should carefully consider when and how to use digital tactics,” the guide said. “Start with modest campaigns that utilize a subset of new CTV capabilities but continue to employ TV KPIs on the back end. Before jumping to sophisticated household-level targeting, see how local and regional targeting can raise results.”

A test and learn approach is advised.

“Testing does not just allow buyers to understand how to most effectively utilize CTV. Results also allow publishers and partners to better learn how buyers want them to deliver,” the guide notes.

A key factor in CTV is data and Xandr urges getting as close as possible to first-party data.

“Plan and buy campaigns with technology vendors that have direct relationships with customers,” the report said. "Publishers that boast their own distribution platforms, coupled with audience authentication requirements, are able to gather a large array of identity signals from viewers. These help advertisers target more effectively to reach the right audience in the right context, including household profile, location, time of day, context of content being consumed, even a particular moment in the buying cycle."

Sellers are urged to get started as soon as possible.

“CTV in many countries is still young—but the growth trajectory for its consumption is undeniable. For TV and video networks, there is every reason to jump into the opportunity at what can still be considered early days,” the report said.

One of the things that make CTV attractive is the ability to target advertisers’ customers in new, more specific ways and media companies need to address that.

“Publishers will need to bring a range of audience attributes to the marketplace, from viewer locations to specific audience interests. Advertisers will need to bring in their own customer and prospect data, too, overlaid to create the optimal audience segments that can be activated for purchase,” the report notes.

The report said that media vendors can help themselves by working with the industry to develop standardized buying systems. But it also warns publishers to maintain control of their inventory.

“The rise of programmatic ad buying began in open-auction marketplaces and often involved remnant inventory. But for TV companies, whose inventory is premium, benefiting from CTV does not mean playing in the bargain bin or being at the mercy of anonymous auctions,” the report said.

AT&T’s Xandr advanced advertising unit said its Invest TV platform now has inventory from A+E Networks and Crown Media Family Networks available to brands looking to plan and execute audience-based campaigns.

A+E and Crown Media previously used Xandr’s Monetize supply-side platform to sell digital inventory.

Xandr, which earlier this year said that AMC Networks, the Walt Disney Co., and WarnerMedia were participating in automated audience-based selling through Invest TV, is reportedly among the assets AT&T is looking to divest in order to reduce debt.

In the meantime, Xandr said brands including AT&T are using its platform to mount campaigns that use multiple networks to reach target audiences.

“Xandr Invest offers the automation and data-driven approach that brands need to make a significant impact. Through unified reach forecasting and measurement in a systems-based process, it opens up a streamlined and flexible way of reserved advanced TV buying,” said Mike Welch, head of Xandr. “Xandr is moving the TV advertising industry forward, alongside top programmers like A+E Networks and Crown Media Family Networks.”

Programmers are increasingly making their inventory for sale on a variety of automated platforms.

“At A+E Networks, we continue our well-established leadership role in providing audience based automated solutions,” said Peter Olsen, president, ad sales, A+E Networks. “We are pleased to expand our A+E Precision & Performance offerings with the addition of Xandr Invest which complements our relentless focus on delivering on our marketing/advertising partners’ goals by providing access to our valuable audience and our premium content through solutions and platforms, whether direct or automated.”

“With the advent of innovative new technologies that yield key data-driven insights, our industry has reached an inflection point in the way advertisers reach their target audiences in the most impactful, efficient way possible,” added Ed Georger, executive VP, advertising sales and digital media, Crown Media Family Networks. “Our partnership with Xandr, a platform that is leading the charge in this space, allows us to more optimally serve our clients and help them meet their core business objectives.”

The greater availability of TV inventory on platforms like Xandr’s helps media buyers reach their client’s target audiences.

“We are thrilled to see more of our top media partners make Linear TV content available to book, measure and report through tech platforms like Invest TV. It’s clear that technology and automation can be our friend as the pandemic has further exposed the highly manual nature of legacy TV  business models, especially at a time when advertisers need speed and flexibility to optimize Linear TV for higher performance more than ever,” said Michael Piner, senior VP, Video & Data Driven Investment at Mediahub. “We believe adding technology and automation to the Linear TV business model going forward will enable the digital-like accountability, targetability and optimization capabilities that our advertisers desire at scale.”

“Here at Hearts & Science, delivering effective reach and optimal frequency is critical to our clients,” added Larry Hunt, senior director, Integrated Video Investment, Hearts & Science. “The ability to negotiate with multiple partners, utilizing one audience currency while garnering a holistic view of Reach and Frequency is a huge benefit to working in the Xandr Invest TV platform.”

TVision, which measures TV commercial engagement, said it has begun projecting audiences at the personal level for advanced advertising players including Oracle Data Cloud, Xandr, VideoAmp and iSpot.

TVision said the companies it works with can combine its Advanced Audience Projections with their own census data to project individual behaviors across similar homes, allowing them to more precisely target campaigns.

“Incorporating TVision data into our data-driven advertising platform maximizes the value we can drive to media owners and media buyers,” said Jason Burke, VP, strategy at AT&T’s Xandr unit. “This powerful big data set allows for planning, optimizing and measuring person-level association of premium video viewership, which is a critical element of TV advertising.” 

Also Read: TVision Launches CTV Ad Measurement Platform

The AAP data set can be used for TV attribution at the person level, reach and frequency analysis, co-viewing valuation and cross-platform measurement.

"Person-level data is a key component to measuring ad performance as we work to help advertisers understand true reach, and attention for their TV ads. With TVision AAP we are able to add a deeper layer of insights to our already robust measurement offering," said Robert Bareuther, senior VP, business development at iSpot.tv.

“With TVision AAP we can deliver the granular and actionable insights on audience attention and viewing patterns to complete the cross-platform picture our customers are asking for. By meeting this critical market need, we can now provide a more comprehensive and individual level view of consumers and how they engage and respond to ads across all of the touch-points in their day,” added Kevin Whitcher, VP of new product development at Moat by Oracle Data Cloud. 

Also Read: As Viewing Rose, Attention Fell, TVision Report Finds

TVision provides TV buyers and sellers with detailed, granular data TV viewing behaviors, including attention and engagement via its software as a service platform.

“Households do not view ads. People view ads. But previously our industry has only been able to measure TV ad reach at the household level. AAP solves this problem,” said Yan Liu, CEO of TVision. “The industry is now able to support various data applications such as TV attribution, reach and frequency optimization at the individual level, in a manner similar to digital.”

AT&T is exploring selling of its Xandr digital ad operations, according to a published report.

Weighed down by debt AT&T has been looking for assets to sell. There have been reports that it has been in talks to divest DirecTV, its regional sports networks and Crunchyroll anime service in addition to Xandr.

 Related: Pandemic Hurts AT&T Second-Quarter Earnings 

According to the Wall Street Journal, which reported the Xandr discussions, AT&T has pivoted from wanting to be a major player in the ad market to subscription services, most prominently its HBO Max streaming operation.

AT&T spent $1.6 billion for ad tech company AppNexus in 2018 to beef up its ad unit, which was later renamed Xandr in honor of company founder Alexander Graham Bell.

Related: Ex-Xandr Head Lesser Named InfoSum’s Executive Chairman 

Earlier this year Xandr’s head, Brian Lesser left the company and Xandr became a part of AT&T’s WarnerMedia unit.

 Data company InfoSum said that Brian Lesser, who resigned as CEO of AT&T’s Xandr advanced advertising unit, will be InfoSum’s new executive chairman.

Lesser, who had been an executive at GroupM previously, joined InfoSum’s  board in April.

Lesser will work to establish InfoSum globally and in North America.

InfoSum also said that it completed a Series A funding round, raising $15.M

The investment was lead by Upfront Ventures and IA Ventures and supported by strategic partners Ascential, Akamai, Experian, ITV and Xandr,

AT&T’s WarnerMedia has set up a system for selling digital advertising inventory programmatic via private marketplaces set up by the company’s Xandr advanced advertising unit.

This year’s election is expected to generate record advertising spending, with big increases coming in digital advertising. That’s happening at the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic is cutting demand for most other forms of advertising.

Xandr said its programmatic pipeline is set up to give election-year campaign access to premium inventory while ensuring trust, transparency and compliance to a dedicated creative approval process.

“WarnerMedia – like all publishers – has a responsibility to meet the needs of our advertising partners while protecting audiences who come to our platforms for information and entertainment,” said Joe Hogan, executive VP of sales and marketing at WarnerMedia. “The highest of standards is key in protecting each of our partner’s messages, and digital environments are no exception. In collaborating with Xandr, we are confident that this system and solution enables political and advocacy advertisers to reach the intended audiences in the proper context, across our entire ecosystem.”

WarnerMedia said it has set up a process that includes a manual creative review to check that ads meet its standards for accuracy and compliance. 

In a recent study, Xandr found that three out of four respondents said they believed political ads include “fraudulent” or “fake” information. Despite that, 60% or more said they have researched or read more about a cause or candidate after exposure to a political ad, demonstrating the need for safeguarding ads.

“Xandr has seen increased demand for flexible access to political inventory this election year across all screens – in premium, brand-safe environments,” said Mike Welch, head of Xandr. “We’ve made a commitment to political buyers to expedite creative approvals to streamline campaigns, while meeting our rigorous compliance standards during this busy election season. By enabling a secondary creative review within our platform, we are able to turn on political advertising programmatically in a safe and compliant manner across the WarnerMedia portfolio.”

Kirk McDonald, who has been heading up AT&T’s Xandr advanced advertising unit, has joined the ranks of executives leaving the company.

Mike Welch, who was in charge of product and business development at Xandr, will be the new head of the unit.

Earlier this year, Xandr CEO Brian Lesser left the company when it appeared he wasn’t going to become CEO of AT&T’s WarnerMedia unit, succeeding John Stankey, who was named CEO of AT&T.

Xandr was later made a part of WarnerMedia, now headed by Jason Kilar, the former CEO of Hulu.

Earlier this month, WarnerMedia let go three senior executives including Bob Greenblatt and Kevin O’Reilly, both of whom were key programmers at AT&T launched its HBO Max streaming service.

In the year since AT&T took control of Time Warner, the heads of several other units have departed including the heads of HBO, Turner, Warner Bros and Turner Advertising Sales.

In his new job, McDonald will be chief executive of North America for WPP’s ad buying unit, known as GroupM.

At GroupM, McDonald succeed Tim Castree, who left late last year after being in the job about a year.

 Amid a pandemic, the streaming video companies pitching at the NewFronts see over-the-top viewing spiking and advertisers more eager than ever to shift their dollars away from traditional TV, where audiences are shrinking.

That has the streamers saying this should be their big year. Media buyer Magna Global expects streaming TV to generate $5.3 billion in ad revenue in 2020, down 3% from last year but favorable compared to a 11% drop for total national TV. Next year, Magna expects streaming TV to register a 15% gain. 

“We know cord-cutting is becoming more prevalent,” Brian Albert, managing director, U.S. agency video, for Google and YouTube, said. “We know young people are not reliably reached by TV anymore. However, TV investment strangely has not moved over roughly the past 10 years as these trends have started to accelerate. We believe that those tailwinds bode well for us as we head into this year’s upfront and beyond.”

Dan Robbins, VP of ad marketing and partner solutions at Roku, put it more bluntly. “The streaming decade has finally arrived. There’s really a demand from advertisers to right-size budgets and to lean into the streaming decade.”

In a normal year, the NewFronts take place before the broadcast networks make their big upfront presentations to Madison Avenue in early May. COVID-19 prevented live presentations. The TV networks have mostly completed their large-scale virtual upfront pitches, and now it will be the streamers’ turn with a week’s worth of NewFronts, via the Interactive Advertising Bureau trade group. 

Media buyers will be tuning in.

“While we spend a lot of time with these partners, it is good to get overall business updates and guidance, and I also think it helps for the broader audiences to see the updates and level-set where partners are,” said Mike Law, president of Dentsu Aegis’ Amplifi media unit.

RELATED: IAB Says 8,500 Have Signed Up for NewFronts

Increasingly, video is video. “We are very fluid in terms of moving dollars,” Law said. “For us it is, where is the best place to spend the first, and subsequently, the next dollar that will drive reach and business outcomes for our clients, regardless of what screen that is? To the consumer, they very much see all of this as TV.”

In addition to disrupting presentations, the pandemic has thrown the upfront marketplace — the actual buying and selling — into disarray. Some products are flying off the shelves and other companies are shut down. Many are somewhere in the middle depending on the lifting of stay-at-home restrictions, which is happening on a state-by-state basis.

In that environment, advertisers are looking for the kind of flexibility and accountability that digital says it offers and traditional TV is trying to provide.

An Expansive Approach

“The upfront can’t be one-size-fits-all,” Roku’s Robbins said. “We’re going to be opening up the show, and our view is that we really need to take a sort of expansive approach to the way we actually present the form and function of the upfront.”

This year’s NewFronts feature some new presenters, including Roku, Snapchat, Tubi and TikTok. There will also be some new faces in new places. Kevin Mayer, who oversaw Disney Advertising Sales, is now CEO at TikTok, and Peter Naylor, long-time head of ad sales for Hulu, is now head of VP of sales, Americas, at Snap. TikTok and Snap were not prepared to make executives available to comment.

Speaking of Hulu, this year the streaming service is part of The Walt Disney Co., and its ad sales are being incorporated into Disney Ad Sales. Disney included Hulu in its upfront road show, but decided to do a presentation in the NewFronts as well.

“Hulu is a big part of what we’re going to be doing and driving Innovation within Disney Advertising going forward,” Disney Ad Sales president Rita Ferro said. “They established the ad-supported streaming business and marketplace, and so we thought it was important to have a position in the NewFront. They have the technology, the scale and the ad innovation that has really led the business.”

This year’s NewFront theme is “Insight, Inspiration and Transformation.” IAB president David Cohen said that most buyers want the presenters to get to the point, instead of building to a big reveal.

RELATED: Ad Buyers See 20% Spending Drop: IAB

“People are interested in solutions,” Cohen said. “They’re looking for answers and help with helping clients drive their business. But others are looking for inspiration. There are people in the marketplace doing really inspirational work, so let’s celebrate that.”

Having the NewFronts after the broadcasters’ upfront presentation shouldn’t hurt the streamers. “There is business that is being written now, and I know there is a whole host of business that is not going to be written until later in the year. So we do not believe that digital video streaming presenters will be disadvantaged by going a couple of weeks after the quote-unquote upfronts,” Cohen said.

Historically, media buyers have been slow to react as viewers have moved from broadcast to cable and from pay TV to streaming, said Cohen, himself a former top media buyer.

Adoption of digital video has been slowed by complexity in that there are many ways to buy the same ad inventory. There are measurement issues that prevent comparing TV and digital video on an apples-to-apples basis. There’s also a perception that digital video is more expensive than cable, although when targeting is taken into account, the effective rates are similar, Cohen said.

Given the present circumstances, “the data is very, very clear consumers are going there in droves and we should as marketers as well.”

Will marketers change tactics in the middle of a pandemic or will they stick to the safety of media with which they’re more familiar? The IAB meets with senior agency leaders and about three-quarters of them said COVID-19 was going to accelerate innovation, according to Cohen.

Digital Media Faring Better

“We have found that by and large, digital media is faring better than traditional media and programmatic is faring better than the direct-publisher business,” Cohen said.

The shift of viewers, and potentially ad revenue, toward streaming has led to the big media companies buying streamers. In addition to Disney controlling Hulu, ViacomCBS bought Pluto TV, Fox now owns Tubi and Comcast acquired Xumo.

“This is not happening by happenstance,” said Cohen, who figures eventually the upfronts and the NewFronts will meld into a kind of video front. “That will happen sooner rather than later,” he said. 

Roku Talks Agility

Advertisers are seeking flexibility and OTT platform Roku is giving upfront buyers control and agility. Agility means the ability to adjust and adapt to individual brand needs based on when they need to register budgets and what sorts of options they might need,” said Dan Robbins, VP of ad marketing and partner solutions at Roku.

Roku is bringing a bunch of special offers to the upfront. Unlike some other digital video vendors, Roku is offering different prices for 15-second spots and 30-second spots. That’s something TV advertisers are used to and it’s helping them move more of their dollars over to streaming in this upfront, Robbins said.

Since many advertisers are turning to streaming to reach cord-cutters and others who don’t have pay TV, Roku is charging advertisers for only that incremental reach. It is also offering free creative services to upfront buyers and will help advertisers that have been using social media turn those ads into video 5- or 15-second commercials.

At a time when business conditions are unpredictable, Roku is letting advertisers running national campaigns opt out of certain ZIP codes if, for example, restaurants aren’t open in those areas.

It is also starting to offer interactivity, with overlays running on top of commercials. That would let an advertiser dynamically advertise a change in store hours, at no charge from Roku.

Roku is also being flexible about when full-year upfront deals will be struck and offer looser cancellation terms than traditional TV networks. For clients that want to commit more ad dollars, Roku is offering favorable expansion options and scatter terms, with the ability to shift between lines of business. For those that need agility, Roku is letting advertisers cancel buys with 14 days’ notice.

Hulu has gone through some changes since last year’s upfront. CEO Randy Freer and ad-sales chief Peter Naylor departed as Disney assumed control. New Hulu president Kelly Campbell will talk about how she is reimagining Hulu, Disney Ad Sales president Rita Ferro said. “It’s more of what they’ve done really well, plus a continued investment around technology and content to really drive the future of Hulu,” Ferro said.

Ferro said Hulu will strike some of the same themes as Disney did during its upfront roadshow: culture, connections, creativity. Ad buyers will also get a look at Hulu Greenhouse, which “helps brands tell stories in the Hulu voice, using the data and technology of that platform to really enrich the storytelling and deliver the connections with audiences,” she said. The advertising part of Hulu Greenhouse is now part of Disney Creativeworks, which creates ads and branded content for Disney clients.

RELATED: Disney’s Ferro on This Year’s Market and the Upfront’s Future

Hulu will be playing a big role in driving innovation at Disney Advertising. “They established the ad-supported streaming business and marketplace,” Ferro said. Hulu offers low ad loads, gives viewers a choice of which ad they want to watch, has special ads that reward binge watchers and ads that come on when viewers pause watching a show. 

“When you start looking at the ad innovation being rolled out by some of these new platforms, they’re all products that exist at Hulu,” she said.

“I think that will only get better as part of
Disney,” Ferro added.

Xandr: Short and Sweet

Xandr was supposed to share an upfront with AT&T sibling WarnerMedia, and its appearance at the NewFronts will be a quick, 10-minute presentation.

“We have a lot of data,” said Jason Brown, chief revenue officer at Xandr. “We see a lot of activity across screens and so we’re going to bring forward a lot of this trend information.”

Brown said Xandr will talk about the rise of identity graphs and how they’re accelerating audience-based buying and planning.

“Even before COVID, the marketplace was pointed in the direction of an audience-first approach,” he said, pointing to the billions the agency holding companies paid to buy data companies like Acxiom and Epsilon. 

“Our pitch has been very focused on applying the advanced segmentation that comes out of these planning tools for the benefit of brands so they can realize real-life outcomes across the full consumer journey,”
Brown said.

YouTube’s Customized Show

For its ninth NewFront, YouTube’s Brandcast will provide customized content to viewers watching the presentation at home. Attendees answered questions about music and celebrities, chose among the creators participating in the presentation — Emma Chamberlain, Dianna Cowern, Josh Gad and Patrick Starr — and even picked what kind of pizza they wanted to show up at their house.

Brian Albert, managing director, U.S. agency video, for Alphabet Inc.’s Google and YouTube, said customizing the presentation illustrated one of streaming’s main selling points: Content that relate to a viewers passion is three times more impactful than whether it has famous actors in it and almost two times as important as whether it has high production values.

The connected-TV boom has boosted the number of people watching YouTube on their TVs. The Google unit says 100 million people now watch YouTube on TV, with roughly two-thirds of them viewers brands can’t reach via TV.  

While TV networks are struggling to get shows produced, YouTube’s creators are still able to upload new content every day, Albert said. As for Hollywood-type original programming on YouTube (like the recently canceled Cobra Kai, the Karate Kid sequel), if it’s not ready for the upfront, YouTube will sell it in scatter, he said.

YouTube is making it easier for advertisers to reach consumers via the big screen through a streaming package added to YouTube Select that includes inventory on the YouTube TV virtual MVPD. YouTube Select, which replaced Google Preferred, consists of the service’s top creators and most popular content.  

“The other change we’re making is we’ve gotten feedback from clients that they’re not able to buy as much of our core lineup’s content as they’d like due to inventory constraints,” Albert said. To fix that, YouTube is adding a new tier called “emerging lineups” that features content in the same categories as YouTube Select, but features the next wave of creators and channels.

Will advertisers pay more to make sure their ads run on connected TVs? “That will be worked out deal by deal, TBD,” he said. 

 Kroger Co., the largest grocer in the U.S., said that data from its consumers will be used to target streaming ads through Roku and addressable ads via AT&T’s Xandr unit.

“It’s more important than ever for brands to be engaging consumers on different TV viewing platforms. With intentional activation, our data science unlocks the full potential of advanced TV as a more effective choice than traditional broadcast,” noted Cara Pratt, vice president of commercial and product strategy, Kroger Precision Marketing.  “Responding to advertiser interest, this new service continues to deliver on our mission to create a more accountable media supply chain for the consumer packaged goods companies we serve.”

Brands will receive custom reporting to measure media effectiveness beyond awareness metrics. Those reports  can show purchase insights such as category share shift, household penetration, and attributable and incremental sales. This is the first time any brand advertising on Roku or Xandr will receive closed-loop sales measurement directly from Kroger, the company said.

“Kroger Precision Marketing has rich purchase-based insights derived from their popular loyalty card program and Kroger stores across 35 states. Xandr’s ability to collaborate with KPM unlocks valuable insights that help category advertisers improve the precision of their audience-driven campaigns,” said Drew Groner, Group VP and Head of Client Partnerships, Xandr. “Therefore, we are able to reach unique audiences such as heavy, medium or light category purchasers, so consumers are ultimately receiving more relevant messages from CPG brands while advertisers can measure important outcomes like sales lift.”

“As the number one streaming platform in the US by hours streamed, Roku is helping advertisers plan and measure for a world where all TV is streamed,” stated Allison Levin, VP  of Ad Sales and Strategy, Roku. “Working with KPM will take this a step further with the targeting and attribution tools for CPG advertisers to invest more effectively and ultimately shift spend to streaming more quickly.”

As it focuses on streaming, WarnerMedia named former Hulu chief technology officer Richard Tom as its new CTO.

Tom will be reunited with Jason Kilar, who launched Hulu and last month started as CEO of Warner Media.

Tom will lead WarnerMedia’s technology and operations organization including technology strategy, platform development and operations as well as shared services across WarnerMedia. This includes the company’s data strategy, content delivery systems, master control operations, broadcast engineering and the technology platform for its new streaming service, HBO Max. In addition, the Xandr technology teams will also now report to Tom.

He succeeds CTO, Jeremy Legg, who will join AT&T Communications as executive VP and CTO, reporting to Jeff McElfresh, CEO, AT&T Communications. 

“Richard is a rare bird in that he brings deep technical chops, a dogged customer focus, clear and bold vision, and a magnetism that attracts other world class builders to him,” said Kilar. “WarnerMedia’s future will be as much about technology as it will be about storytelling and having Rich report to me as our technical leader strongly signals that.”

In addition to working at Hulu with Kilar, Tom and Kilar do-founded Vessel, a short-form ad supported subscription  video service. He also served as CTO of digital entertainment at Verizon.

"Having been a part of the early innings of online video, it's incredibly exciting to have the opportunity to redefine the future again with Jason and the WarnerMedia team," said Tom. "It's really fun to think about how technology will continue to help innovate the way WarnerMedia informs and inspires through amazing storytelling."

In what has traditionally been upfront season, AT&T WarnerMedia said it is ready to do business whenever clients are ready to negotiate.

“We’ve realized we can operate under these unprecedented conditions,” said Joe Hogan, executive VP, sales and marketing at WarnerMedia. “And we can have a more holistic conversation with clients not only about surviving these unprecedented times, but thriving.”

WarnerMedia this year has more to offer clients. It has absorbed AT&T’s Xandr unit, giving it enhanced advanced advertising capabilities and is working more closely with AT&T’s enterprise business to help businesses connect with customers and take advantage of the mobile device shift from 4G to 5G using custom content.

Hogan said that WarnerMedia and Turner Broadcasting before that always sold to clients three ways, either in the broadcast upfront, where ad time is bought in advance for the broadcast year running October through September, the calendar upfront--January through December--or scatter, when ad time is bought weeks or days before it airs.

This year, it’s unclear whether most advertisers will be ready to make commitments during the usual upfront timeframe of negotiating in June for the next broadcast year. That’s not a problem.

“In a more normal year, we have advertisers shift from upfront to scatter, some from scatter to upfront, some from broadcast to calendar, some from calendar to broadcast. So those are natural shifts that we’re used to dealing with anyway,” Hogan said. “We’re here for whatever pathway works best for the customer.”

But this is not a normal year, partly because of the pandemic and partly because of management changes at AT&T since last year’s upfront.

Last year WarnerMedia head of ad sales Donna Speciale left and in March, Xandr CEO Brian Lesser resigned. When Xandr was made part of WarnerMedia in April, chief revenue officer Gerhard Zeiler was put in charge of all of AT&T advertising activity. And new WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, formerly with Hulu, started this week.

Hogan is leading the company’s go to market strategy.

Even before Xandr became part of WarnerMedia, the two units were planning to have a unified upfront presentation next week. That plan was dashed by the pandemic.

Related: Turner, Xandr Call Off Plans For Virtual Upfront

Instead WarnerMedia has been sending out weekly videos about spotlighting media brands like CNN and TNT that would have played during an upfront, It is also sending out “solution sync” newsletters twice a week. The material is also available for clients on an online site.

“It is information that rolls out as we get it and it keeps our partners up to date while respecting their calendars,” Hogan said. “We’re getting tremendous feedback.”

Even before combining with Xandr, WarnerMedia had a lot of assets to keep track of, from networks such as TNT, CNN and Cartoon Network, to digital properties like Bleacher Report and branded content units like Courageous.

Hogan notes that WarnerMedia and Xandr have been working together since last August. In early March, the WarnerMedia and Xandr sales and marketing team spent two days together collaborating and strategizing on how to best serve customers.

“We are aligned on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “When you put that entity under Gerhard, it is seamless for us to be in market together with a focus on putting clients in the center and solving their problems.”

Xandr adds to the WarnerMedia portfolio with analytics, data and insights, Hogan said. “Addressability certainly is going to be very important. It’s going to be even more important as brands look to not have the same message everywhere given the unprecedented times we’re in.”

WarnerMedia already shared Xandr’s philosophy around improving the viewing experience by having fewer, more relevant commercials interrupting its programming.

Like other programmers, WarnerMedia is missing sports, particularly the NBA playoffs this time of year. Hogan said the company is helping clients find other ways of reaching sports fans.

Related: NewFront Presentations to Stress Accelerated Change

“We're super lucky that we have such a rich and deep library of content that attracts all types of viewers and with our insights and data from Xandr we can see that the sports viewers are still there,” he said. “We just have to reach them through a different genre, which we're doing actively.”

There is some business going on as usual. “We were already well underway with our CNN partners in and around the 2020 election and that work continues. That has not paused even for a moment. We’re continuing to work with our partners on the opportunities that will be available with CNN from debates to town halls to convention coverage to election coverage. We are actively working on that,” he said.

AT&T said it was merging its Xandr advanced advertising unit into WarnerMedia.

Gerhard Zeiler, who is WarnerMedia’s chief revenue officer and president of WarnerMedia International, will oversee all advertising operations across AT&T.

The two companies had been increasingly working together. They had planned to have a joint upfront presentation in May. That presentation was cancelled as the COVID-19 epidemic spread.

Related: Stankey: WarnerMedia, Xandr Must Work Together Better

The move follows the promotion of WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey to CEO of AT&T and the departure of Xandr CEO Brian Lesser.

Kirk McDonald, chief business officer at Xandr will continue to lead Xandr, reporting directly to Zeiler.

“We are in unprecedented times that amplify the priority across both WarnerMedia and Xandr, to deliver valuable results and outcomes for our agencies and clients,” said Zeiler. “Now more than ever, we need to simplify advertising and further our marketplace capabilities for our customers. This is done through one holistic conversation that spans premium content and trusted environments, alongside proven and advanced ad capabilities.” 

AT&T said it was merging its Xandr advanced advertising unit into WarnerMedia.

Gerhard Zeiler, who is WarnerMedia’s chief revenue officer and president of WarnerMedia International, will oversee all advertising operations across AT&T.

The two companies had been increasingly working together. They had planned to have a joint upfront presentation in May. That presentation was cancelled as the COVID-19 epidemic spread.

The move follows the promotion of WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey to CEO of AT&T and the departure of Xandr CEO Brian Lesser.

Kirk McDonald, Chief Business Officer at, Xandr will continue to lead Xandr, reporting directly to Zeiler.

“We are in unprecedented times that amplify the priority across both WarnerMedia and Xandr, to deliver valuable results and outcomes for our agencies and clients,” said Zeiler. “Now more than ever, we need to simplify advertising and further our marketplace capabilities for our customers. This is done through one holistic conversation that spans premium content and trusted environments, alongside proven and advanced ad capabilities.” 

In the wake of the sudden departure of Brian Lesser as CEO of AT&T’s Xandr ad unit, AT&T COO John Stankey said Xandr and WarnerMedia must work more closely together.

In a memo to Xandr staffers Tuesday, Stankey re-emphasized that advertising is important to AT&T as it launches its direct-to-consumer streaming service HBO Max.

“Advertising is critically important to the future of media, and I believe platforms that evolve to accommodate both subscription and ad-supported formats will be a natural content aggregation point for the industry — not to mention a preferred experience for the customer,” he said.

But he added that AT&T must approach the market in a unified manner.

"There is still much more that needs to be done to integrate and coordinate more closely our go-to-market functions between Xandr and WarnerMedia,” he said. “I will be working with the respective leadership in the coming weeks to achieve this objective — acknowledging that our inability to work from the office will likely create some challenges.”

WarnerMedia and Xandr had planned to have a joint upfront presentation in May. That event has been canceled, like almost all other upfront events, because of the coronavirus crisis.

Lesser, who joined AT&T three years ago from media buyer GroupM to run AT&T’s advanced advertising unit, resigned last week. Sources indicated that he sought the job of CEO of WarnerMedia, a post Stankey, who was named to the additional post of COO of AT&T last year, plans to eventually relinquish.

Related: Xandr Targeting Linear Ads for Disney, AMC Nets

Stankey called Lesser’s departure “unexpected,” saying “while I am disappointed Brian will not be with us for the next chapter, I want you to know that our commitment to making advertising matter has not changed.”

Stankey also said AT&T was committed to Xandr’s Monetize and Invest platforms. Just as Lesser was resigning last week, Xandr made big news as The Walt Disney Co. and AMC Networks agreed to let advertisers use Xandr Invest to plan and buy campaigns using ad inventory from their linear TV networks.

For the interim, it appears that Kirk McDonald, Xandr’s chief business officer, is in charge of Xandr. Stankey's memo did not mention when a new unit CEO might be named.

The memo also addressed how the company was dealing with the coronavirus situation.

“The widespread impact of the coronavirus continues to challenge all of us like nothing we have seen before. Priority number one is taking care of yourself and your loved ones,” Stankey said. “We will do everything we can as an organization to keep you informed as we work together to serve our customers during this stressful and uncertain time for everyone.”

One year after being christened as Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising company continues to push the message that its technology can help make advertising more palatable for consumers and more effective for advertisers.

It also wants to make advertising more lucrative for programmers and content creators — and not just for the ones owned by AT&T.

“We’ve been very busy in building technology and launching products to realize our vision of building a premium advertising marketplace, so advertisers can reach audiences and media companies can get the best value for their inventory,” Xandr CEO Brian Lesser said at the company’s second annual Relevance conference in Santa Barbara, California.

Some things have been accomplished in year one. The company has launched an ad-buying platform, Xandr Invest; an ad-selling platform, Xandr Monetize; and an ad-inventory marketplace it calls Community.

At the conference, Lesser said Bloomberg and Vudu had joined the Community marketplace.

Meanwhile, AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson, defending the company’s “modern media company” strategy at a Wall Street conference, talked about his expectations for the company’s advertising business.

“Because we have all of the viewership data from set-top boxes, we have viewership data on the mobile phones, we’re getting an amazing premium for selling that small advertising inventory in DirecTV,” Stephenson said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference in New York. “When we did the Time Warner deal, now WarnerMedia, what came with it was a rather large inventory of advertising,” Stephenson said.

Stephenson noted that AT&T had hired Lesser, who had been with media buyer GroupM, and invested in technology, including AppNexus.

“We spent the last year and a half standing up the technology stack to now take the Turner ad inventory,” he said, referring to WarnerMedia’s ad-supported channels. It will use the same AT&T data and “drive advertising revenues off the Turner inventory. We will be going to the upfronts next spring with one face, Xandr, and representing all of the Turner inventory. We will be doing that next spring and we’re pretty excited about what the possibility is here for advertising.”

Xandr officials at the conference did not elaborate on how Xandr and Warner- Media would be working together more closely than they had at the past year’s upfronts.

In addition to the Turner linear cable TV ad inventory, Xandr will eventually be selling inventory from a new streaming video product from WarnerMedia. WarnerMedia plans to launch HBO Max next year as a non-ad-supported product.

About a year after that, though, the company plans to launch an ad-supported video-on-demand service. Lesser said Xandr was already looking at ad loads and ad formats for the service.

The conference, attended by media buyers, brand marketers, media companies (some that have joined Community, some that have not) and ad tech companies, continued a conversation about how advertising should react as consumer content consumption behavior changes.

“That is causing changes in how businesses behave and how they invest,” Lesser said. “It’s also causing changes in how we cooperate and how we work together. If you remember nothing from my talk today, remember that in order to meet the consumer where they are in terms of delivering content, in terms of integrating advertising, we need each other as partners.

“No one company is going to get there by itself and this conference is really a way for us to engage with all of you — our customers, our partners, our clients,” Lesser added.

Sure, the media business is always competitive. But few sub sectors are as currently fraught as advanced advertising, where a host of giant technology and media-telecom companies are battling for pole position in fast-developing market that’s still molten … and one day, likely to be vastly profitable.

As the players maneuver through a complex chessboard of M&A, big client defections and major client wins, spin is in.

Last week, for example, executives within Comcast’s advanced ad unit FreeWheel quietly bristled at an AdExchanger report suggesting their corporate parent would possible buy ad-tech start-ups Cadent and Dataxu. The reason, the report suggested, was that Comcast was losing ground to AT&T advanced ad unit Xandr, amid the recent struggles of video ad-serving subsidiary FreeWheel, which lost Disney as a client to Google last fall.

An individual close to FreeWheel, who asked not to be identified, said the company doesn’t even consider Xandr direct competition. In fact, he noted, Xandr is a FreeWheel client.

He also disputed the notion that FreeWheel needs help.

FreeWheel has almost 800 engineers, he noted, “who have a lot of experience solving for advanced adverting in TV. FreeWheel kind of has everything it needs.”

Related: Comcast Targeting Ad Tech Companies Cadent and Dataxu for Possible Acquisition: Report

So what about the acquisition rumors?

“The ad tech space is tough right now if you’re a point solution,” he explained. “A lot of ad tech companies approach FreeWheel, as they do Xandr, and say, ‘please buy us.’”

According to the Wall Street Journal, DataXu began working with investment bank GCA Advisors LLC last fall to prep for a sale that would value the company at around $300 million.

As for Disney’s move from FreeWheel to Google Ad Manager, the executive tied it to the broader battle last year between Comcast and Disney for the privilege of buying 21st Century Fox entertainment assets.

“That was all part of the larger M&A action,” he noted, not any indicator that FreeWheel is “struggling,” as AdExchanger suggested.

Asked for comment by MCN, FreeWheel executive VP and general manager Dave Clark would only concede that the advanced ad business is “very competitive” out there right now.

But he did have some pointed words for Google, which FreeWheel now identifies as its direct competition in the video ad-serving market.

“TV should be concerned about Google’s track record with publishers in the digital space, and how that has played out for publishers,” Clark said. “And they should know that there are alternatives.” 

Comcast is looking to beef up its targeted advertising portfolio with the possible acquisitions of ad-tech startups Cadent and DataXu, AdExchanger reports.

The effort is being driven by competition from AT&T, which is making fast advancements with its Xandr operating unit in the race for targeted advertising supremacy in the media and telecom sectors.

Comcast didn’t immediately respond to MCN’s inquiry for comment.

According to the Wall Street Journal, DataXu began working with investment bank GCA Advisors LLC to prep for a sale that would value the company at around $300 million. DataXu was founded in 2009 and has raised around $87.5 million in funding from investors including recent Comcast acquisition of Sky.

DataXu and New York-based Cadent Network would beef up Comcast’s ad tech holdings at a time in which the cable conglomerate’s FreeWheel unit has struggled with the client defections Disney and Google, AdExchanger points out.

“If brands and advertisers start embracing the AT&T/Xandr model and clients start looking for something similar, there is definitely a case to be made that Comcast wants a seat at the table,” said Elgin Thompson, managing director of tech investment firm Digital Capital Advisors (DCA), told AdExchanger. 

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — AT&T, founded by telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, has unveiled Xandr, a company that seeks to reinvent advertising.

At what it called a Relevance Conference here, former media agency executive Brian Lesser, now CEO of Xandr, described the company’s ambition to make advertising matter again.

“If all we do is improve advertising as it exists today, then we at [Xandr] will have failed miserably,” Lesser said.

To some degree, the event was a pep rally for the new AT&T unit. It was also a forum for discussing what ails the ad business.

Message Addressed Across Media

Guests included executives from media agencies, ad tech companies and other media firms, including representatives of NBCUniversal, Fox, CBS and Viacom.

Along with Turner — part of AT&T since the acquisition of parent company Time Warner (since renamed WarnerMedia) — NBC and Viacom have been leaders in talking about changing TV advertising by using better targeting to enable them to raise the value of their commercial inventory and improve the consumer experience of ad-supported TV by reducing commercial clutter.

An executive from one media company praised the way Xandr was introduced with great ambition but no exaggerated claims about its current capabilities. What AT&T was aiming to do wouldn’t be easy but perhaps, with AT&T throwing its assets into the effort and collaborating with others in the industry, the transition to a new approach to TV advertising would happen faster and be more successful.

In his speech introducing the name Xandr, Lesser said that “if you think about the advertising marketplace right now, everybody’s frustrated.”

Lesser said advertisers are under pressure to justify how they’re spending their marketing dollars and demonstrate return on investment. They also want more choices for how they reach their consumers, he said.

AT&T is uniquely positioned to create that marketplace because of the assets it has in content, distribution (notably DirecTV), data and technology, Lesser said.

“Using those four assets, we can improve advertising for consumers,” he said. “We can develop innovation where advertising isn’t a traditional commercial break but becomes an interactive experience tied directly to commerce.”

Two outside partners — cable company Altice USA and telco Frontier Communications — have already signed on to have Xandr sell addressable inventory for them (see Platforms).

To a degree, those seeking to reinvent TV advertising want it to be more like digital advertising.

Some TV executives at the event thought AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson went too far in that direction during an interview at the conference.

“I think advertising is really, really smart in half the world,” Stephenson said. “The digital half is really good. The digital half is very targeted. The digital half, if if you’re an advertiser, you’re getting good feedback. You’re getting the ability to manage campaigns and to deliver ads on your own without a lot of human intervention.”

TV is a very different world, he told CNN’s Poppy Harlow, who conducted the interview. “If you look at the side of the world where you operate, the premium video original TV business, it looks nothing like that,” Stephenson said. “And the advertising is not terribly targeted. The advertising does require a lot of human intervention. We’re still selling the lion’s share of the advertising in upfronts and so forth.”

Stephenson said the TV was among the most averse-to-change businesses.

“We actually believe that if you can make the premium video side behave, look, operate like the digital side that people will invest more and that people will be excited about the advertising model on that side,” he said.

Not everyone shared Stephenson’s rave for digital advertising.

Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst Joanna O’Connell presented a study that showed digital advertising was even more disliked than TV advertising and that some attempts at targeting backfired by making consumers angry about the way their data was being used and personalization easily turned creepy.

Cracking the Attribution Code

Nevertheless, Lesser and Xandr could be making steps in the right direction.

“I think we need a better mousetrap,” said John Swift, CEO of investment and integrated services, North America, at Omnicom Media Group, speaking on a panel about addressable advertising.

“We’re in a spot where we don’t have the right measurement, we haven’t figured out how to bring video across different devices and screens, we haven’t cracked the code of attribution,” Swift said.

“The good news is, I like what AT&T is doing, and I’m not just saying that because [AT&T] is my biggest client,” he said, referring to its plan to connect with by having distribution, content and technology.

“You guys are probably the second company that aligns some of those things, but you’re the first one that actually has a path to get there,” Swift said.

On the same panel, Nick Brien, CEO for the Americas at Dentsu Aegis Network, said the kind of addressable advertising Xandr planned to provide is useful. “It plays a most significant part of our desire to execute with ruthless efficiency,” he said.