LEXINGTON, Ky—In a notable advance in the way local broadcast TV stations can monetize their content, Viamedia.ai has announced that it is working with Hearst Television to enable true household-level addressability for broadcast television.

The partnership marks a fundamental shift in how broadcast television inventory can be activated and monetized, allowing advertisers to target specific households utilizing ad inventory of the most-watched linear video outlets in markets across the country.

“Local broadcast TV delivers unparalleled impact for advertisers within targeted markets and we’re adding to our toolkit the capabilities to target not just the whole of the market but specific households within markets,” said John Robertson, Hearst Television vice president, distribution. “As we evolve our business alongside our valued partners in the media-buying and distribution communities, it’s imperative that we use technology that makes our linear inventory even more efficient and impactful. Viamedia has delivered an effective tech solution that enables us and MVPD partners to deliver addressability across broadcast streams coupled with the advanced data, analytics and transparency marketers seek. The result is a holistic ad buy – a one-stop-shop encompassing linear and digital attributes.”

This development follows an extensive market test to enable targeted television advertising via dynamic ad insertion within streams using broadcast spectrum. The test, conducted over several months, involved Viamedia, Hearst Television station WLWT-TV and MediaKind (formerly Harmonic), whose advertising SaaS product provided technology enabling last-mile, household-level ad delivery.

The new tool provides a station like WLWT the ability to participate in previously unavailable markets which could drive a 25% increase in monetizable impressions.

Through Viamedia’s Parrot Ad Decisioning System (ADS) platform and Hearst Television’s architecture of a compatible broadcast technology infrastructure, advertisers gain access to precision targeting and flexible buying models initially on Hearst Television’s inventory in select markets.

Parrot ADS manages and monetizes advertising across linear, CTV, and programmatic environments. It helps broadcasters and MVPDs alike to unify ad delivery, extend campaigns across screens, and simplify reporting and monetization across the TV ecosystem.

As a result of the deployment, Hearst Television can now make select inventory available for dynamic, data-driven activation, meeting advertiser demand for heightened audience addressability and measurability. It also strengthens the already powerful advertising proposition of local TV advertising with added analytics and performance metrics.

“The TV viewing audience remains one of the most attractive scaled opportunities for advertisers to reach engaged consumers, even as the ecosystem grows increasingly fragmented,” said Evan Rutchik, president & chief strategy officer of Viamedia. “While CTV and FAST Channels are growing in popularity among advertisers, linear still accounts for a massive audience. By bringing true addressability to Hearst’s broadcast inventory, we move the market toward a model where broadcast delivers the same level of precision and accountability that advertisers expect from other channels, which can help create additional value for all parties – including broadcasters, MVPDs agencies, and brands. We are excited to work with Hearst Television to bring this inventory to market for advertisers who appreciate premium content and localized ad delivery.”

“TV, especially broadcast, offers great value to advertisers, and the ability to precisely target a specific audience dramatically increases the importance of the channel in media plans,” added Phil Sloan, senior vice president and managing director, Canvas. “Hearst Television, Viamedia and their partners have opened the door to making all of TV a performance-driven channel, meeting advertiser demand. We look forward to continuing to explore this for our clients’ campaigns as they look to raise awareness and measure outcomes.”

Viamedia’s approach operates across a three-part ecosystem: broadcaster inventory, distribution infrastructure, and the Parrot ADS technology layer. Together, these components allow broadcast spots to be delivered dynamically in addressable form within qualifying environments, supporting both local and national campaigns.

Viamedia uses artificial intelligence to unify a process that previously required advertisers to balance multiple vendors and data sources to reach audiences across a plethora of screens. The goal is to unlock faster execution for buyers, but also to open new monetization opportunities for MVPDs, video providers, and now also broadcasters.

Hearst Television is a Supporting Member of the Go Addressable trade organization whose mission is to further accelerate the advancement of addressable TV advertising.

STAINES-UPON-THAMES, U.K.—Dynamic ad insertion specialist Yospace demonstrated a one-to-one addressable advertising breakthrough earlier this month at IBC2025 when the company used the new international standard for server-guided ad insertion (SGAI), MPEG-DASH Events and added less than one second of latency for the advertising, resulting in glass-to-glass latency of under five seconds.

This development is believed to be the first real-world implementation of the new Alternative Media Presentation, which was recently ratified by the Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA) into the new MPEG-DASH standard.

For live sports, the need for live streaming latency to match, or improve on, that of live broadcast has long been a goal for live streaming, especially as more viewers are streaming content. Live broadcast latency generally is above 5 seconds. Latency in live streaming could be anywhere from 20-45 seconds, with low latency generally considered to be 1 to 6 seconds.

The addition of addressable advertising to live streams has been a major hurdle in making low latency commercially viable. One-to-one addressability requires time for ad tech systems to process ad requests, potentially run real-time programmatic auctions and respond to requests before missing the window and timing out, Yospace said.

With ad revenue underpinning much of video streaming businesses, it is critical that any low latency ad insertion does not impact the ability of streamers to maximize their commercial opportunities, it said.

Yospace developed its sub-5 second low latency solution using the new MPEG-DASH Alternative Media Presentation streaming extensions, which has been developed by a working group of the Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA), to which Yospace has contributed.

In collaboration with Qualabs, which supported Yospace’s integration with Shaka Player, the demonstration included a non-disruptive L-Shape ad format that runs alongside the main content stream, the company said.

The L-Shape squeezeback is one of the CTV ad formats being promoted by IAB Tech Lab, which will also be subject to standardization. It also used an ad measurement technique that reported back real-time data on ad views to create IAB-compliant measurement, it said.

“Dynamic ad insertion is the backbone of live streaming monetization, and low-latency streaming of major sporting events is commercially challenging without ad revenue,” said Olivier Cortambert, head of solutions architecture at Yospace. “Our successful demonstration at IBC is a real breakthrough as it is not only one of the first-ever use cases of SGAI powered by MPEG-DASH Events, but we kept our promise to deliver low latency without any adverse effect on the user-experience or commercial opportunity.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.—DirecTV has acquired the majority ownership in NVIDI Technologies, a provider of addressable television advertising products designed to help brands more accurately target audiences.

INVIDI will continue to operate as an independent company led by its existing managment. It had been jointly owned by DirecTV, Dish and WPP.

DirecTV has been a longtime proponent of addressable advertising and recently added addressable advertising capabilities to its linear satellite inventory.

Terms were not disclosed.

“Our longstanding support of INVIDI has enabled us to connect brands with their audiences effectively,” DirecTV Chief Advertising Sales Officer Amy Leifer said. “The deal underscores our commitment to continue to invest in the future of addressability and leans into INVIDI’s industry-leading solutions to deliver outcomes for brands of all sizes and across all categories.”

INVIDI provides three primary solutions for advertisers: A consolidated campaign management and order distribution platform through INVIDI Conexus; a supply-side solution for distributors and programmers to deliver addressable advertising on linear broadcast, streaming and AVOD through INVIDI Edge; and the ability to manage, serve, and optimize ad delivery across direct and programmatic sales channels for streaming services in a single interface through INVIDI Pulse. 

“INVIDI Technologies has had a longstanding relationship with DirecTV as a client and an investor, and we know this will only strengthen that support,” Bruce Anderson, co-CEO of INVIDI, said. “DirecTV is a strong advocate for addressable advertising, and with their increased involvement, we expect to be able to further grow our business in the U.S. At the same time, we plan to continue to work to build on our successes internationally, expanding our efforts in India, APAC, MENA, Europe and Latin America.”

DALLAS—Dynata has announced a partnership to license and incorporate Comcast data into Dynata’s advertising solutions’ product suite. 

The deal means that marketers for the first time can combine the accuracy and depth of Comcast’s aggregate viewership data with Dynata’s real-time survey data to assess the performance of their marketing efforts across broadcast, cable, streaming and addressable television. 

The joint solution provides a single-source, consented, panel-based TV measurement approach that improves marketers’ decision-making around advertising performance, when comparing the relative strength of video assets’ performance across all screens and devices.  

“We’re very excited to support Dynata in their efforts to enable marketers to better measure the impact of their media investment and understand consumer perceptions, favorability and intent,” said Larry Allen, vice president and GM, addressable enablement, Comcast Advertising. “Our ecosystem is stronger when marketers and media owners have a clear understanding of how cross-media campaigns perform and how their brand messages impact consumers.”

This partnership underscores both companies’ desire to further improve and accelerate innovation in audience-based measurement across media channels, while empowering marketers to derive a much more confident picture of their cross-screen media investment.    

“Partnering with Comcast to enhance our advertising solutions’ product suite is a strategic investment in our commitment to deliver innovative products that help our customers make practical marketing decisions through the highest quality and scalable passive television viewership data sets,” said Eric Sandberg, managing director of Dynata’s global advertising solutions business. “This partnership reflects Dynata’s commitment to delivering customer-centric solutions that enable more accurate insights, smarter strategies and more effective campaigns.”  

NEW YORK—DirecTV Advertising has announced that it will be working with 605 to provide its customers with better data, measurement and attribution solutions. 

By tapping into 605’s sophisticated measurement platform and rich data partnerships, DirecTV Advertising said it will be able to expand DirecTV’s existing addressable ad data and tools to provide customers with more visibility on lower funnel metrics including sales lift, website activity, geo-location visitation and more.

“The combination of DirecTV’s market-leading addressable TV product with 605’s analytical rigor will create a compelling offering for brands who increasingly want meaningful and timely metrics on the performance of their spend,” said Tom Keaveney, president of 605. “We anticipate this will make advanced measurement and attribution accessible to an even greater number of DirecTV brands.”

“DirecTV Advertising is always driving new opportunities to provide innovative and differentiated attribution solutions to our customers,” said Amy Leifer, chief advertising sales officer of DirecTV. “This partnership will unlock valuable insights and showcase how addressable campaigns can deliver real results for marketers and brands.”

NEW YORK—As Warner Bros. Discovery pushes to expand its ad supported streaming efforts, the company has announced that it will integrate Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) across the digital platforms for its entertainment, sports, news and lifestyle brands, including Max and discovery+.

“At Warner Bros. Discovery, we prioritize combining the best TV content available with ad experiences that match the quality of our programming,” said Jim Keller, executive vice president of digital advertising sales and advanced advertising at Warner Bros. Discovery. “Offering new capabilities such as Unified ID 2.0 within our inventory means that our advertisers will be able to leverage their first-party data to target the audiences they want. We look forward to continuing to deliver these new capabilities on behalf of our clients across our wide portfolio of properties.”

Pioneered by the advertising technology provider The Trade Desk, UID2 is an industry-backed identity solution that aims to enable greater personalization in a privacy conscious manner, while maintaining the value exchange of relevant advertising, the companies said. 

“Across the open internet, we are looking for more effective ways to connect with a consumer who is using multiple devices, apps and more in an effort to serve a consistent and relevant ad experience through tools like Unified ID 2.0,” said Will Doherty, vice president of inventory development, The Trade Desk. “We welcome Warner Bros. Discovery and their incredible offering of TV content to the growing number of companies who are changing the way advertising is bought and sold through Unified ID 2.0.”

NEW YORK—DirecTV’s advertising division is teaming up with Dish Media to develop a standardized advertising process and improved workflow for programmers. The companies touted the partnership as “a major step forward in reducing the time and effort required for programmers to enable addressable advertising across multiple distributor footprints.”

Dish Media and DirectTV Advertising’s new offering provides three distinct programmer options:

• Direct integration via the Invidi Conexus consolidated campaign management platform
• A plug-and-play solution for broadcast or broadcast and cable networks combined— including live events—from Adcuratio
• Unified workflows across multiple distribution endpoints with Canoe Service Assurance

These new solutions provide programmers with flexibility for how they want to enable, while also expediting the time to market by removing the need for custom integrations and development, thus streamlining the implementation process, the companies said.

“We’ve seen the power of addressable technology and the tremendous benefits it brings marketers, with the ability to precisely reach consumers, optimize for cross-platform reach and frequency, and measure outcomes,” said Matt Van Houten, SVP of Product, Operations, and Business Development, DirecTV Advertising. “Now, we’re excited to announce the next wave of streamlined addressable solutions which will unlock the powerful capabilities of this format for programmers and ultimately benefit advertisers with a broader and simpler addressable ecosystem.”

“In the past, the programmer enablement process has been custom and often quite manual, slowing down the adoption of addressable and the benefits that it brings,” said Kevin Arrix, SVP, Dish Media. “By offering these standardized and consistent solutions that improve programmer operations, we’re making it easier for media owners to light up more of their inventory for addressable targeting across our platforms.”

NEW YORK—FreeWheel has teamed up with AMC Networks to introduce a new, fully self-service linear addressable solution. 

The launch is notable because it will help programmers monetize previously hard-to-access inventory for monetization purposes and streamline the management for multi-screen campaigns.

It also illustrates the growing importance of addressable advertising. 

According to research from Go Addressable, an industry initiative to advance the adoption and scale of addressable advertising, nearly 90% of advertisers agree that addressable is important to the future of TV advertising, and one in three addressable TV advertisers plan to increase their spending this year.

After successful addressable advertising trial campaigns in late 2020 and 2021, AMC is offering three national addressable slots in every hour of original programming on AMC and WE tv, with Amazon on board as the first advertising partner to take advantage of the opportunity to more effectively reach consumers with relevant advertising through this enhanced level of targeting.

“As we are demonstrating with our own inventory every day, addressable advertising has arrived, and now the next step is making it even more widely available and easier to buy,” said Evan Adlman, senior vice president of advanced advertising and digital partnerships for AMC Networks. “We are thrilled FreeWheel agreed to partner with us to expand access to this superior approach to television advertising, unlocking inventory that allows businesses to deliver more relevant and targeted messages to viewers across the country.”

FreeWheel is currently working with Canoe, an industry joint venture formed by Charter, Comcast and Cox, to introduce this new solution with AMC Networks. Moving forward, it will be available through other programmers later this year.

With this new offering, advertisers can now:

• Make real-time decisioning and optimization decisions across previously siloed supply to improve audience reach and monetization.
• Utilize a self-service solution to give programmers control of their inventory.
• Use an automated schedule ingest to identify addressable supply and capture relevant business rules (e.g., industry categories, SASO), thereby reducing the need to identify spots in multiple systems.

“We’re approaching an inflection point in addressable advertising. Interest and spend in this sector is growing, and until now, programmers have been constrained by a lack of scale,” said Mark McKee, general manager, FreeWheel. “At FreeWheel, our purpose is to better connect buyers and sellers with solutions that make TV advertising more efficient, and we believe this new solution will go a long way in achieving that goal for linear addressable and the industry.”

SAN FRANCISCO—WideOrbit has announced the latest release of WO Traffic, the company’s flagship broadcast media ad sales and commercial operations platform with new features that include an automated addressable ad replacement solution for live streams.

As viewing continues to grow on connected TVs and streaming platforms, the new automated addressable ad replacement solution for live streams is designed to help stations and station groups monetize streaming via OTT/CTV and NextGen TV. 

“WideOrbit has a long tradition of continuous innovation and investment in our clients’ success. We’re excited to introduce our addressable ad replacement solution with the release of WO Traffic v22.0,” said Will Offeman, WideOrbit chief product officer. “Over 80% of our customers today are streaming their over-the-air content and addressable ad replacement will make it easier for them to take full advantage of revenue opportunities on the stream.”

The company noted that streaming via over-the-top and connected TV (OTT/CTV) now accounts for 24% of total TV consumption, up from 19% in 2019, and ad spend in 2022 will exceed $19 billion,. a 32% increase over last year, according to Insider Intelligence. In addition, Nielsen’s 2022 Global Marketing Report found that 61% of North American marketers are planning to increase their OTT/CTV ad spend this year.

WO Traffic’s addressable ad replacement solution enables a single playlist to be sent to both airtime (over the air) automation and streaming ad servers, with Spot and Material level data. 

As a result, broadcast spots on the live stream can either achieve extended reach or be replaced with addressable ads. The digital playout system uses data from WO Traffic to make dynamic ad replacement decisions at the Spot and/or Material level. 

By monetizing ads replaced on the stream, stations can maximize the revenue potential of live streaming their broadcast content via OTT/CTV, while also ensuring they’re fully prepared for the addressable capabilities of NEXTGEN TV (ATSC 3.0).

Other features and enhancements in WO Traffic v22.0 include: 

• Efficiency improvements to the Electronic Material Instructions module, based on customer feedback;
• An all-new application area for compiling and analyzing Instructions Sets across Material bundles, Advertisers, and Properties;
• The ability to exclude Agency Commission and/or Tax on Order Lines, allowing for commissionable, non-commissionable, taxable, and non-taxable lines on an order;​
• Log efficiency enhancements, including an option for improved spot placement in swing breaks.

WO Traffic v22.0 is now available for general release. 

More information on WO Traffic v22.0, is available in a recent webinar, “One Platform, Multiple Solutions: What’s New in WO Traffic v22.0.”

DENVER—Comcast Technology Solutions has announced the launch of its national linear addressable advertising solution for customers and technology partners.

The new solution is designed to simplify dynamic linear addressable ad insertion and provide distributors with the backend technology needed to seamlessly drive scale

Comcast Technology Solutions, which is a division of Comcast Cable, also announced that Comcast will be the first national TV distributor to implement the solution to support its addressable advertising initiatives. 

In announcing the new product, the company explained that addressable advertising, which enables households watching the same national TV shows to see different ads that are more relevant and targeted to them, poses challenges for creative management and control. 

Linear Rights Metadata Management (LRM), a part of the CTSuite,  leverages SCTE 224 to provide integrated workflows that enable intelligent ad decisioning for tailored household-level TV advertising.

Used effectively, SCTE 224 is a standard notification interface that can present richer linear metadata in a consistent way to trigger linear addressable ads — alleviating the complexity and inconsistency from manual data entry, from multiple sources, in multiple formats, the company said. LRM provides the signaling and advanced metadata communication required for intelligent addressability in ad breaks.

"This new industry solution is helping to further drive innovation and scale in addressable advertising by reducing much of the friction that currently exists," said Bart Spriester, vice president and general manager of the Content and Streaming Providers Suite for Comcast Technology Solutions. "We are removing many of the manual processes and variations around metadata that have historically hampered the progress of implementing linear addressable ads. We're confident that LRM can help play a central role in accelerating addressable TV.”

"At Comcast Advertising, we're fully committed to accelerating the growth of addressable TV and making it easier for advertisers to incorporate it into their campaigns," added Larry Allen, vice president and general manager, data and addressable enablement, Comcast Advertising, the advertising division of Comcast Cable. "LRM, along with Comcast Technology Solutions' expertise in implementing SCTE 224, will provide operators, programmers, and advertisers with the backend technology needed to seamlessly drive scale and simplify the advertising workflow."

Specifically, LRM ingests and aggregates the metadata of advertising assets, normalizes it into SCTE 224 format, and stores it in the cloud. SCTE 224 data is then distributed to multiple endpoints, ad decision managers, and software adapters. In addition to ad selection, LRM helps implement and enforce advertising rules and restrictions, such as:

• Unique ad requirements per MVPD, vMVPD, or content aggregator;
• Showing a specific number of ads or limiting the number of spots over a certain duration for a specific product group; and,
• Specifying the minimum spacing between ads belonging to a specific product group.
• For example, a national beverage ad from one brand can be shown to different household audience segments based on interest. Rules can specify that only four beverage ads can be played over the course of a specific program, or that a beverage ad can only be played in one in every four ad pods.

Beyond LRM, Comcast Technology Solutions offers the Advertising Suite, which is being used by programmers to support upcoming addressable advertising deployments. The Advertising Suite provides centralized management of creative ad inventory and streamline workflows automatically. It delivers a comprehensive solution for addressable ad management, personalization, ad intelligence and scalability, giving customers the visibility and control needed to optimize ROI on addressable TV campaigns.

More information is available here. 

AMSTERDAM—Irdeto has launched its Irdeto Server Side Ad Insertion platform, which maximizes the addressable live ad inventory of OTT video at scale while delivering a seamless TV-like viewer experience, the company said today.

The solution integrates with any ad server or an existing CSAI (client-side ad insertion) solution to deliver targeted, personalized ads during live events and on linear channels. While Irdeto declined to identify its first customer, the company said the solution has already been brought to market and is being used to deliver targeted ads at scale to online video subscribers using connected platforms.

“For decades advertising has been the backbone of live television," said Shane McCarthy, chief operating officer of video entertainment at Irdeto. "As the consumer viewing behaviors rapidly shift towards streaming video platforms, it is only natural for us to seek new innovative solutions to empower our customers. We're proud to be rolling out this new solution to provide a TV-like ad viewing experience on a video streaming platform, which helps streaming services overcome the current challenges of latency, device fragmentation and ad blocking of other ad insertion technologies,” 

“With this new solution we empower streaming platforms to explore new revenue streams by maximizing the value of their premium OTT ad inventory," he continued. "Ultimately, it's about listening to our customers and delivering solutions that can empower them.” 

The new solution creates an individualized media stream for segments of viewers to personalize and target ads. To do so, the original streaming manifest is modified for each viewer. Each ad decision is based on the viewer’s information and profile, such as past viewing history, demographics and geographical location. The data is matched to an ad on the ad server, which is targeted to a viewer audience with a similar profile, the company said.

When the Irdeto SSAI detects an ad profile, the selected ad is added into the content stream before it reaches the viewer’s playback device, it said.

Adding ads into the live stream in the network eliminates latency and buffering and ensures continuously high video quality when comparing that of program content and ads to offer viewers a smooth TV-like viewing experience, it said.

Ad blocking is minimized, and SSAI eliminates timeouts and black screens during ad playback due to device fragmentation. 

Irdeto’s SSAI users can maximize their addressable live ad inventory at scale, and OTT service providers can leverage existing ad servers and CSAI infrastructure or build infrastructure from scratch. The company’s broad partner eco-system and vendor agnostic outlook allows customers the freedom to work with their vendors of choice, Irdeto said.

A tracking manager in the Irdeto SSAI platform monitors ads that are stitched into a stream. The manager tracks various aspects of the ad, such as impressions, errors and quartile completion, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—CBS plans to bring addressable advertising to broadcast TV in the second half of 2021, according to a report from Variety.

CBS Chief Operating Officer John Halley told Variety in an interview that CBS intends to make technology available that will let advertisers buy addressable commercials, sending them only to particular subsets of the network’s viewing audience.

Addressable ads have been a point of focus for advertisers over the last few years, particularly on digital, cable and streaming.

The new technology ads that CBS is touting will reportedly surface on screen when the network runs promos for its own shows. ViacomCBS even intends to send out promos of its own programming with addressable technology.

TV Tech has reached out to ViacomCBS for confirmation. For more information, read the original Variety report. 

COLUMBIA, Md.—LTN Global is launching what it calls a universal signaling solution designed for addressable TV advertising, LTN Target.

LTN Global says that fragmentation in distribution platforms and ad decisioning systems have prevented linear channels from running national addressable ads at scale. LTN Target is meant to help solve this issue, by integrating with all parts of the advertising ecosystem to enable linear addressable advertising on different networks, platforms and workflows.

LTN Target offers frame-accurate signaling to ensure the replacement of an ad with the addressable creative is invisible to the viewer. It has contextual metadata and precision advertising that allows addressable advertising to coexist with traditional linear advertising. There is cross-platform signaling that allows the same addressable ad to play across multiple platforms simultaneously. It also has workflow automation.

The system acts as an automated translation layer and communications proxy between systems in the advertising ecosystem. It interoperates with all ad decision providers, addressable platforms, broadcast automation, traffic and scheduling systems.

LTN Target’s frame-accurate timing meets the insertion and distribution infrastructure requirements by using video watermarks, in-band and out-of-band SCTE 104/35 and DASH/X-Links.

“We’re excited to be part of the early stages of the addressable advertising revolution,” said Malik Khan, LTN Global executive chairman and co-founder. “LTN Target is the only automated universal solution that integrates with all the parts of the TV ecosystem to enable the scale needed to attract advertisers. Our customers have already used Target to deploy their first campaigns and are looking to make their ad inventory even more valuable through increasingly sophisticated data enhancements.”

LTN Global has been working with the Open Addressable Ready (OAR) consortium.

For more information, visit www.ltnglobal.com.  

NEW YORK—Addressable advertising on TV is the number one priority in 2021 for nearly half of the brands and agencies surveyed in a new study called “The Transformation of Television: Embracing the Era of Addressable TV.”

The study was commissioned by Dish Media, Cadent, Canoe, Comscore, INVIDI Technologies, LiveRamp, Verizon Media, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia, and conducted by Forrester Consulting.

According to the study, while 100% of U.S. brands and agencies in the U.S. that participated in the study have experienced at least one challenge implementing addressable advertising, 46% have it at the top of their to-do list.

Respondents viewed addressable as an opportunity to help improve the effectiveness of targeting capabilities for TV campaigns (62%), improve the ability to tie TV spend to business/sales outcomes (47%) and deliver more personalized and relevant ad experiences to viewers (44%).

Key ways to achieve these, per the study, are to simplify the buying and management of campaigns across suppliers and establishing a single measurement standard for media companies.

Ultimately, the study came up with four recommendations for pushing addressable TV forward:

• Examine media mix through a consumer-first lens; 
• Evaluate the technology and data needed to power media planning and strategies; 
• Broaden the picture of what it means to “buy TV;” and 
• Test addressable TV programs to build a business case, while preparing for a learning curve 

“The study confirmed our belief that addressable has the potential to transform the industry, but also renewed our sense of urgency to create an aligned and open ecosystem of distributors, measurement platforms and media companies,” said Kevin Arrix, senior vice president of Dish Media. “We now know that the best way to scale addressable is to have widespread industry collaboration, so we must all rapidly evolve to help advertisers optimize addressable for years to come.”

The full report is available to download online.

SAN JOSE, Calif. & NEW YORK—Roku and Nielsen are partnering up to boost addressable advertising and cross-media measurement as a result of Roku’s purchase of Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising (AVA) business.

The AVA business consists of Nielsen’s video automatic content recognition (ACR) and dynamic ad insertion (DAI) technologies. Roku says that the acquisition will accelerate its planned launch of an end-to-end DAI solution with linear TV programmers, a process that it already has on its streaming platform.

“Combining Nielsen’s AVA technology with Roku’s innovative ad tech and scale will enable us to deliver the benefits of TV streaming advertising to traditional TV,” said Louqman Parampth, vice president of Product Management at Roku. “Roku will bring the promise of DAI to the market for the first time ever at scale—providing better targeting and measurement for advertisers, creating easy integration and additional revenue opportunities for programmers’ ad sales teams, and improving the TV experience for viewers.”

Nielsen has already tested its own DAI system with the likes of AMC Networks, CBS, Discovery, NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia, according to TV Tech’s sister publication Next|TV.

As part of the deal, Roku and Nielsen will enter into a long-term commercial agreement to leverage Total Ad Ratings (TAR) on the Roku platform. This includes Roku’s OneView ad-buying platform, which will natively integrate with Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings for advertisers. Roku will also enable publishers to implement Nielsen Digital Content Ratings. In addition, Roku will help further advance Nielsen One, Nielsen’s cross-media measurement scheme.

“The measurement of ads and content on Roku devices will accelerate the path to a single, deduplicated cross-media currency,” Scott N. Brown, general manager, Audience Measurement, Nielsen. “As Roku brings the power of dynamic ad insertion to all forms of TV, we’re excited to help monetize the addressable market by measuring smart TV as a currency, which Nielsen can do at scale.”

No financial details of the deal were disclosed. Roku said in its announcement that it expects the deal to close in the second quarter of 2021.

At the closing of the deal, Roku will take on Nielsen AVA employees and ownership of ACR and DAI patents.

NEW YORK—NBCUniversal said it made an advanced advertising agreement with Charter Communications that will expand NBC’s U.S. addressable advertising footprint.

Campaigns sold by NBCU will now be able to reach as many as 45 million households, 40% more than before the agreement with Charter was reached.

NBCU parent Comcast and Charter are among the founders of On Addressability, a consortium that aims to standardize addressable advertising to make it easier to buy and execute campaigns.

"Viewing habits have been evolving for some time now, and continue to accelerate towards on-demand and streaming platforms. Advertisers need to meet viewers in the moment, and that's why NBCUniversal has been laser-focused on expanding our addressable capabilities," said Krishan Bhatia, president & chief business officer, global advertising and partnerships, NBCUniversal.

"Through our partnership with Charter Communications, we are taking an important step forward by delivering targeted advertising to millions of Spectrum viewers who are watching video on demand. This will enable us to continue to connect our viewers to the brands they know and love, at any time of the day."

The integration of systems, allowing advertisers and agencies to leverage dynamically inserted ads into content watched on demand is expected to be operational in 2021.

“We look forward to working with NBCUniversal to help them expand their addressable offerings, and send more relevant advertisements at scale, to Spectrum customers,” said David Kline, executive vice president at Charter Communications and president of Spectrum Reach. “This partnership will provide NBCU an opportunity to make their networks more impactful to advertisers, while also furthering our goal to bring scale and accessibility to addressable TV.”

MIAMI—Univision has announced that it is joining Project OAR, which is made up of U.S. media companies and focused on establishing a common technology for dynamic, addressable TV advertising.

Project OAR tests measurement and technical specifications of the OAR (Open Addressable Ready) standard for management and delivery of addressable ads. In the second half of 2020, it launched market trials for linear and on-demand formats on smart TVs.

Univision has been tapped to serve on Project OAR’s Steering Committee, which works to create a standard by which all parties in the TV ecosystem can collaborate and unite on addressable advertising. Other Steering Committee members include AMC Networks, Comcast NBCUniversal, Disney, Discovery, Comcast’s FreeWheel, Fox, Hearst Television, E.W. Scripps, WarnerMedia, ViacomCBS, Xandar and Vizio.

“As we continue to evolve the company under new leadership, Univision is proud to join Project OAR and to work with such preeminent media companies to meet the needs of brand partners in a changing media landscape,” says Donna Speciale, president of Advertising Sales and Marketing for Univision. “Together as an industry, we are helping to advance addressable TV advertising, deliver relevant experiences for all consumer audiences and present new advertising opportunities for marketers.”

As part of Project OAR, Univision can provide new ad products across its Spanish-language TV portfolio, which includes its traditional broadcast networks, cable networks and like soon its planned streaming service, PrendeTV.

NEW YORK—ViacomCBS and Dish Media have taken a step forward in the ushering in of addressable advertising, announcing that they delivered addressable impressions within a live national broadcast via MVPD set-top boxes.

The two companies shared that they executed a successful addressable ad replacement on a select number of live campaigns across Dish households in certain CBS-owned-and-operated markets. 

The activation was powered by Adcuratio signaling technology, which was developed in partnership with ViacomCBS and Dish. The tech enables broadcast addressability across MVPD households that integrates with programmer and distributor infrastructure and signaling processes, the companies said.

“This breakthrough allows ViacomCBS to deliver the most powerful solution for our advertisers by combining the reach of national broadcast with the targeted relevance of household addressable,” said Mike Dean, senior vice president of Advanced Advertising at ViacomCBS. “While cable networks have been addressable for years, addressable national broadcast has remained technically unreliable until now, making this a tremendous milestone for the industry and the future of television.”

Tim Myser, Dish Media general manager of strategy and products called it “a critical achievement in continuing to drive scale for addressable TV advertising.”

NEW YORK—The TV industry now has a guideline for implementing addressable advertising campaigns via the newly released “On Addressability Playbook” from Charter’s Spectrum Reach, Comcast Advertising and Cox Media.

Addressable advertising is the ability to send targeted messages to different audiences rather than broadcast the same commercial to all viewers. This is meant to help replace some of the loss of traditional advertising and better compete with digital media.

The playbook is the latest step of the On Addressability initiative that launched in 2019—of which Charter, Comcast and Cox are founding members—to boost the effectiveness and value of TV advertising.

“Since the launch of On Addressability, we’ve been talking with major programmers and distributors to help marketers incorporate addressability into their TV strategies to drive better results,” said Marcien Jenkins, president, Comcast Advertising. “Despite this progress, however, there are still challenges for both buyers and sellers alike. That was the impetus for the playbook. The timing could not be better. In the current environment, advertisers are ready to pivot, and we need to be ready, too. The technology is there. Now we just need to bring advertisers a more scalable and consistent offering—and do it quickly.”

The content of the playbook includes an ecosystem overview, including common definitions and standards for addressable TV advertising; a step-by-step technical guide for programmers and distributors to launch addressability within their environments; strategies for incorporating addressability; and shared learnings on executing addressable TV campaigns for marketers.

“The interest in data-driven, audience-based TV advertising strategies from both media buyers and TV sellers has never been stronger, and we face a set of common challenges to realize our full potential,” said Louis Gump, senior vice president, Cox Media. “The fastest way to clear these hurdles is to work together as an industry to determine best practices, improve processes and share strategies for success. ‘On Addressability’ is helping the industry move toward these goals, and the playbook is one tangible example of these efforts.”

The playbook will live on www.onaddressability.com, with updates added to it as necessary.

LONDON—Synamedia has introduced Iris, an addressable advertising solution for broadcasters, pay-TV operators, OTT services and hybrid service providers to leverage targeted advertising to unlock new revenue streams.

Iris can help organizations create compelling advertising propositions for advertisers wanting to reach specific TV audience segments of any size and makeup across all services, devices and screens, the company said.

“With Iris, the TV industry can finally combat the erosion of ad revenues to digital platforms and achieve its long-held ambition of generating new income from advanced TV advertising,” said Scott Kewley, vice president, Advanced Advertising and Data at Synamedia.

The end-to-end solution removes friction points encountered with piecemeal approaches, thereby delivering faster time to value, it said.

Iris supports unified campaign management as well as delivery to and measurement of multiple screens across apps and live, linear and catch-up services, overcoming one-way and hybrid broadcast-OTT challenges. This approach simplifies execution of plans and helps broadcasters and other video service providers merchandise their inventory more efficiently, minimize operational costs and boost income, the company said.

Iris uses data from multiple sources to gain sophisticated audience insights and anonymized household, user- and device-level profiles that can be checked against an advertiser’s desired characteristics, said Synamedia.

The new offering provides cross-platform ad measurement to exploit all forms of video inventory in a single campaign. 

“Our end-to-end solution with its unified campaign management capability makes it easy for customers to drive new revenues from their inventory—even over more challenging one-way and hybrid networks—and offer established and new advertisers an alternative to the increasingly wild west world of online advertising,” added Kewley.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NextGen TV offers broadcasters the opportunity to personalize ads sent to households or, a bit more broadly, zone ad delivery to neighborhoods in a DMA, creating entirely new competitive possibilities for local television stations and a way to better serve the needs of advertisers.

I reached out to Graham Heap, senior director of the Ad Tech product portfolio at Imagine Communications, to find out if the advertising technology is in place to support broadcasters looking to cash in on these addressable advertising opportunities.

What I learned was that ad technology being used to enable addressable ads for platforms like OTT, cable and satellite are easily repurposed for NextGen TV.

But there’s more to the story. To fully leverage the possibilities of addressable advertising there needs to be a shift in mindset among advertisers, ad agencies and broadcasters, one that grasps the value of buying—and selling—audiences in the aggregate as opposed to the traditional commercial spot, says Heap. 

In this interview, Heap discusses NextGen TV ad tech as well as how a shift in focus away from spots to an aggregated audience will better serve advertisers and broadcasters. 

(An edited transcript.)

TVTechnology: As addressable advertising becomes available to broadcasters deploying NextGen TV, is the ad tech that’s grown up to support other media from an addressable ad point of view in place to assist broadcasters? 

Graham Heap: For us, I would say ATSC 3.0 is a blueprint, if you like. It is just another flavor of [media supporting addressable ads] from an ad tech, campaign management and billing point of view.

I don’t care if it’s ATSC 3.0 that’s the vehicle for the serving, or it’s a set-top box, or it’s an ad attached to an OTT service somewhere.

We think there’s a lot of applicability of the things we’ve been developing globally around ad insertion that will absolutely play out in the ATSC 3.0 model.

TVT: How would you describe where U.S. broadcasters are today in their thinking about taking advantage of addressable advertising in an ATSC 3.0 future? 

GH: I can guarantee you they are thinking about it. We have a good relationship with some of the big U.S. broadcasters, and it’s very much front of mind for them.

ATSC 3.0 should be a game changer for broadcast television, and it should be a game changer for U.S. ad tech, the business side of it, the income side of the business.

So yes, there is a lot of work going on. There are different ways of utilizing that technology.

TVT: What insight do you have on how U.S. broadcasters might sell addressable advertising?

GH: Knowing that you can insert something is great, but you have to step back and try to build a business model around it.

Is addressable advertising a separate offering that’s billed a different way or do I want to bake that into my sales and traffic operation and have it as an upsell on my existing business?

PLUS: Bringing Profits to NextGen TV

There are lots of different ways, and you can take multiple paths. You don’t have to choose one. Right now, there’s a lot of thought going into that.

TVT: NextGen TV offers OTT transport of packets to smart TVs as well as OTA delivery. There are ways both could be used for geographically zoned delivery of content and advertising. Will this present a challenge for ad technology?

GH: It’s being done already. Addressable advertising in the U.K. is exactly the same model. Sky, the satellite broadcaster over here, traditionally had a national footprint only, effectively over-the-air, with one signal going to everybody.

With their addressable solution, where they are inserting ads in the [set-top] box, they are not really doing it that much for genuine personal advertising where they are hitting me with an ad.

What they really are doing is going to the high-value Aston Martin car garage in Esher, Surrey, which can afford those cars, and they are selling very specific campaigns to a brand new set of buyers that would never think of using TV.

Having said that, this is a different topic, but the U.S. has a way to go in terms of getting the buying community to be willing and able to buy audience instead of buying spots.

TVT: Do you mean something like digital, where audience is aggregated and sold vs. television with spot sales?

GH: Yes. There is still a model in play in the main 30-second spot business which is: “I am going to buy spots from you, and you’re going to guarantee an audience to me for those spots.”

So I kind of think I am buying an audience, and I try to place my orders in such a way that I get the audience I want.

But if the commitment you’ve made to the audience doesn’t get delivered by the spots you’ve committed to, you owe me.

The rest of the world doesn’t suffer from this. They are selling a level of audience and committing to a level of audience and therefore if I deliver that audience I am good. It doesn’t matter exactly what spots I use to do that, exactly where they are placed.

As a buyer, I will have some boundaries of what I won’t accept. But generally most of the delivery is run by the seller—by the station side.

As the opportunities of things like ATSC 3.0 start to develop and become real, that is all about audience. It’s all founded on the idea that I’m going to find you the audience.

So, I think we need to tackle both those things together because we want the buyers to become audience-aware and keen to do that on my traditional business while at the same time being keen to use these new technologies so broadcasters can deliver audience.

TVT: How does this shift from a spot-buying mindset—and selling for that matter—happen, especially when buyers are accustomed to buying spots? 

GH: There’s a bit of a fear factor that needs to be broken down. You know, some trials and some slow starts, carve outs or other ways of approaching it. This is not a big bang. 

We just put our software into Televisa, one of the biggest broadcasters in Mexico because they are taking this journey. But they don’t just flip a switch and say, “I am selling this way now, and I used to sell that way.” They just put a new piece on their menu and attract customers to it. I think that approach can help to loosen the fear factor a bit.

More information about ad tech from Imagine Communications is available on the company’s website.

SAN DIEGO—Standards-based watermarking specialist Verance Corp. will add support for Project Open Addressable Ready (Project OAR) to its Aspect watermarking platform, the company said today.

A multi-industry consortium has undertaken Project OAR to establish standards that enable better advertising experiences for viewers via dynamic advertising on internet connected TVs and devices, the company said.

At the moment, Project OAR specifications have not been made public. However, it is expected that watermarking technologies will play a role in the accurate delivery and decisioning of addressable TV ads.

“Project OAR has made remarkable strides in bringing the industry groups together and readying a solution for today’s environment,” said Verance CEO Nil Shah. “Addressable advertising is poised to transform the television industry, and watermarking will accelerate its benefits.”

Supporting the project extends Verance Aspect’s existing support for ATSC watermarking, the company said. That watermarking makes it possible to deliver hybrid broadcast-broadband features via ATSC 1.0 and 3.0.

The Verance technology makes it possible to activate dynamic ad insertion at scale. It offers seamless precision to enable announcement, discovery, insertion and synchronization of ads for live and time-shifted viewing as well as frame-accurate ad synchronization and the ability to reach 100% of connected TVs and devices via all distribution paths.

Verance is working with broadcast equipment vendors to include Project OAR watermark embedding capabilities in their products by the end of the year.

More information is available on the Verance website.

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

NEW YORK—Project OAR has announced that it is adding a new member to its consortium for addressable TV advertising in the form of the Fox Corporation. As a new member, Fox will serve on the primary Steering Committee that is tasked with creating a standard by which all parties in the TV ecosystem can collaborate and unite on addressable advertising.

“We believe that this consortium, which benefits from both sell-side and buy-side support, will help drive adoption across the industry and enable us to execute at scale,” said Dan Callahan, vice president, audience and automated sales at Fox.

In the Steering Committee, Fox joins Disney Media Networks, Warner Media, Xandr, Comcast’s FreeWheel and NBCUniversal, Hearts Television, AMC Networks, Vizio and Inscape.

Project OAR also made the announcement of the new Agency Advisory Committee that aims to provide guidance and buy-side insight into the issues of an addressable marketplace. Participation pledges for this committee came from Publicis Media, Omnicom Media Group, GroupM, IPG/Magna, Dentsu Aegis Network, Havas and Horizon Media. The group met for the first time in May to discuss issues that range from measurement to inventory management, privacy policies and cross-networking targeting.

Project OAR’s goal of an open standard for addressable advertising on Smart TVs and connected devices projects to develop its offering in the first half of 2020.

NEW YORK—The development of a new, open standard for addressable advertising on connected TVs will be a group effort, as a number of America’s top media and technology companies and smart TV company Vizio are forming a consortium called Project OAR, which stands for Open Addressable Ready.

Joining Vizio as part of Project OAR are Disney’s Media Networks, Turner, Xandr, Comcast’s FreeWheel and NBC Universal, CBS, Discovery, Hearst Television, AMC Networks and Inscape. The goal will be to define technical standards for TV programmers and platforms to deliver more relevant advertising experiences within linear and on-demand formats on smart TVs.

“We all recognize the most important goal of this initiative is to drastically enhance the TV experience for people at home,” said William Wang, Vizio founder and CEO.

Inscape will be the ones developing the technology, with input from the other companies. The standard is expected to implement a technologically sound, dynamic ad-delivery system that utilized industry best practices. “The standard will define the baseline for ad delivery, impression verification and privacy compliance, but networks will have plenty of room to create unique and enriched advertising experiences,” said Jodie McAfee, senior vice president at Inscape. “We are making this flexible enough to enable interactivity and other bells and whistles that have yet to be imagined.”

Vizion has made the pledge that once the consortium has developed the standard it can be deployed on its opt-in footprint of connected TVs. The goal though, is for the protocol to be open and designed to enable any internet-connected TV maker and connected-device company to use.

Project OAR is hoping to have a working product by spring 2019, with full deployment targeted for early 2020.

NEW YORK—A pair of moves is pushing Nielsen toward a focus on addressable advertising for Smart TVs. The first was the acquisition of Sorenson Media, an addressable TV technology provider, which will assist with Nielsen’s launch of its new division, Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising.

According to Variety, Nielsen acquired Sorenson in a bankruptcy court proceeding with a winning bid of $11.25 million.

Nielsen is combining the addressable TV ad platform of Sorenson with its own Automatic Content Recognition technology, which it acquired as part of its acquisition of Gracenote two years ago. Another previous acquisition that will assist with this latest effort was the purchase of Qterics, a Smart TV software and privacy management company.

“[W]ith the Sorenson Media acquisition, we can create improved value and efficiency across the entire media chain—from ad targeting and delivery to measurement and attribution—and make addressable TV more of a reality,” said David Kenny, CEO of Nielsen.

Through its new Advanced Video Advertising initiative, Nielsen will aim to make every addressable TV ad transacted in a way so that it is transparent and drives value for the TV industry.

Nielsen launched a five market addressable TV pilot across two OEMs in 2018 with CBS, A+E Networks and other broadcasters with the goal of further understanding consumer’s experience and the impact of broadcast workflow. Sorenson’s addressable technology will be added to the next phase of the pilot, along with additional programmer participation.