Thus far, it has helped harmonize how TV networks define their respective audience segments for use by ad buyers.

Now the JV that is OpenAP wants to start piecing together viewers themselves.

OpenAP’s first act was all about semantics – unifying how the networks described attributes they make available for data-driven buying.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Ed Davis, OpenAP Chief Product Officer, says OpenAp’s next act is to focus on identity.

Multi-screen users

“Over the next 12 months, our goal is to unlock a cross-platform evolution on our core use cases,” he says.

“Our goal is to evolve the three primary use cases we have in planning, optimization, and measurement, to include cross-platform capabilities.

“Underneath any cross-platform pursuit really is this notion of having an identity for your consumer, for the viewer – identity and data describing the viewer data, describing what the viewer is consuming.

“That’s really important to OpenAP as we pursue any cross-platform extensions to what we’re doing.”

Ad identity

Launched three years ago, OpenAP last year made a step-change – launching an actual marketplace through which ad buyers can purchase data-driven TV ads across those networks from OpenAP itself, or else through buying platforms with OpenAP integrations.

A recent update added workflow automation and guaranteed “audience delivery” for cross-platform campaigns.

The latest initiative would mark OpenAP’s own foray in to a space that is consuming everyone in advertising – identity graphs.

Specifically, though, Davis says OpenAP would want to make such a graph out of existing data points.

Co-mingled data

“When we think about an identity graph, when we think about the existing solutions out there,” Davis says.

“There’s been a lot of data environments that have been created that are now supporting this co-mingling of data in safer ways – being able to take identity data from one data vendor collector and put it into a safe environment where it can be combined with data from another data provider.

“For us, our goal at OpenAP is to be able to accept data from an agency or brand and match that up with a measurement data or audience activation data set, and then be able to share the result, be able to share the audience segment with any publisher that the agency or brand would like to explore campaigns with.”

You are watching “The New Media Reality: A Consumer-Centric View of Identity and Personalization Emerges,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by Transunion. For more videos, please visit this page.

By Robert Andrews on @robertandrews