TIP Initiative Implements First Local Ad API

TIP Initiative (Television Interface Practices), an industry work group dedicated to promoting open interfaces to streamline advertising transactions for local TV broadcasters and their media agency partners, today announced the first Logtimes interface has been implemented by several system providers including Hudson MX,  Imagine Communications, Premium Media 360 and WideOrbit. The interface lets TV stations automatically report local spot airing times directly to agency buying partner systems for analysis and reconciliation.

The TIP Initiative also announced NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations division (NBC and Telemundo Owned Stations) has joined its consortium of local television broadcasters that already includes Hearst Television, Nexstar Media Group, Gray Television, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Tegna and Tribune Media.

“We are pleased to join the TIP Initiative and support the consortium’s efforts to create a framework that provides an opportunity to streamline transactions and increase automation for our media agency partners,” said Frank Comerford, chief revenue officer, NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations.

On behalf of the TIP broadcast members, Brett Jenkins, CTO of Nexstar Media Group, added: “Working with systems providers to implement modern, standards-based transaction interfaces will facilitate marketplace efficiency and integrity, while creating new revenue opportunities for local television broadcasters.”

The goal of the TIP Initiative is to attract more ad budgets to local broadcast TV stations by making it easier, faster, more accurate and transparent for media agencies to fulfill local campaign goals for clients. This year, TIP will focus on engaging additional systems providers, media agencies and broadcasters to broaden overall participation and expand the portfolio of interfaces to include inventory avails, proposals, makegoods and commercial instructions.

Bruce Roberts, President of WideOrbit, said: “TIP’s work to define technology standards for the industry enables us to introduce innovative new solutions for streamlining transaction workflows, including the recent release of Airtimes Reporting through the WO Programmatic Seller Console. We look forward to further collaborations with TIP and its technology partners in 2019.”

John Bowser, CEO of Premium Media 360, added: “Premium Media 360 is pleased to support the broadcast industry by utilizing the TIP APIs to send spot times to our advertising agency partners. By connecting and combining transactional data shared between broadcasters and agencies, we are creating new efficiencies, reducing revenue leakage and shortening payment cycles.”

Imagine Communications’ Dave Villano, CTO of AdTech said: “Eliminating the complexity of the selling process for local TV helps our customers grow revenue. Imagine Communications is excited to be part of TIP and we look forward to streamlining the exchange of transactional information.”

TVB continues to provide a repository for TIP’s work and offers open access for industry partners to the API framework. The consortium’s newest TIP Initiative Framework version 3.1, and draft API security guidelines are available for comment at www.tvb.org/TIP.