OpenX Announces TV+, Programmatic Industry Initiative To Unlock Potential Of Biddable CTV

OpenX Technologies Inc., an omnichannel supply-side platforms, has launched TV+, “an ongoing initiative to unlock the full potential of CTV by combining the most powerful aspects of linear and programmatic buying models.”

In the current CTV landscape, buyers aren’t able to efficiently buy in biddable media environments due to an over-indexing of intermediaries. Additionally, brands and agencies often pay CTV CPMs without having full transparency into what they’re buying. When non-TV content is categorized as CTV, publishers’ premium content is devalued and buyers cannot lean into their KPIs with confidence.

In this first phase of TV+, OpenX says it will “eliminate all resellers from its CTV inventory pool, ensuring that buyers have more working media and reduced invalid traffic. This move also ensures that publishers get their fair cut of transactions to power the development of high-quality content for consumers.”

Additionally, OpenX will remove all non-TV content, including fireplace apps, gaming, UGC, OTT and mobile, from its CTV inventory. While OpenX says it will continue to monetize these types of inventory as online video rather than CTV, this phase of TV+ properly “classifies content, providing more premium advertising experiences, a clear value for inventory, and more accurate measurement.”

This first step in the TV+ mission to transform programmatic CTV into a high-quality marketing opportunity “allows publishers to confidently place their premium inventory into biddable environments while giving brands and agencies full transparency into what they’re buying. With these innovations, TV+ delivers a fair and transparent value exchange between publishers, agencies and DSPs,” the company says.

“CTV is a powerful channel for marketers to reach and engage with their audiences,” says Adam Roodman, Yahoo SVP of product strategy and management. ”As this happens, solutions that prioritize control and transparency will enable buyers to lean into their KPIs in biddable CTV environments, helping them further realize the full promise of programmatic CTV.”

“As more marketers choose CTV for incremental reach over linear, there’s tremendous value for the ecosystem in scaling reach beyond direct buys,” adds Ashwin Navin, Samba TV co-founder/CEO. “Solutions that provide trust and transparency empower data providers to scale audiences in CTV and digital while increasing confidence in biddable environments and optimizing working media.”

Through TV+, buyers unlock direct premium publisher integrations across more than 110 million measurable “glass-on-wall” devices. This access to direct-sourced inventory improves transparency and control, while log-level data delivers visibility into impressions.

Further, this initial phase of TV+ “protects consumers’ interests by ensuring they’re getting the premium content they signed up for because premium publishers are able to secure an appropriate price for their inventory and invest resources back into creating premium content,” OpenX adds.

“The long-term growth of biddable TV advertising requires buyers and sellers to have confidence in marketplace integrity,” says Chris Kane, Jounce Media founder. “OpenX’s TV+ creates these conditions, ensuring media buyers get the quality they expect from their TV investments and ensuring media owners, not supply chain intermediaries, are the beneficiary of those investments.”

“I’ve spent the majority of my career in TV, and ensuring that CTV doesn’t repeat the same cycles as digital is imperative to the success of programmatic TV,” says Geoff Wolinetz, OpenX SVP of publisher and demand platforms. ”As we embark on creating the future of CTV, we have the opportunity to make programmatic TV more efficient and effective by ensuring content is fit for purpose, accessed directly, and demand and supply partners have transparency across the value chain. This will positively impact buyer confidence, enabling them to implement key strategies such as incremental reach.”