National television programmers Fox, NBCUniversal, Paramount, TelevisaUnivision and Warner Bros. Discovery are teaming up with trade group VAB and the OpenAP data collective to set standards, cooperate on collecting streaming data and certify providers of streaming audience measurement, according to an announcement.
“This year in particular, there are more conversations around transacting on new currencies cross platform than ever before,” David Levy, CEO of OpenAP, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “Everyone is really gearing up for these new upfront conversations, and we need to be clear on how we can work together and how we can transact in this marketplace. It’s going to be very important that we put very clear guidelines out there and just make it more transparent how a buyer can actually transact in this environment.”
The newly formed Joint Industry Committee will work to enable multiple ways to set the value of advertising transactions, or what are known as currencies, and primarily focus on a certification process to establish the suitability of emerging cross-platform measurement solutions by next year’s upfront sales season.
The committee has started work on developing measurement certification standards, which will be formalized and officially announced on March 1. The JIC on April 25 will offer a first look at the progress toward a multicurrency future and readiness of measurement partners for the upfront.
In the coming months, the JIC intends to expand membership to other qualified premium video programmers. The JIC will also elicit active participation from advertising agencies and qualified trade bodies to advance the multi-currency future in this collaborative forum.
The committee will fund key data initiatives to speed up innovation in measurement. Its efforts will include:
- Establish and maintain a measurement certification process in partnership with the VAB that will be housed inside of the JIC for third-party measurement vendors conducting cross-platform premium video currency services that will be operational by broadcast year 2024.
- Create a programmer dataset for third-party measurement vendors by harmonizing streaming viewership data from the OpenAP infrastructure.
- Hire a third-party audit firm to verify the accuracy of the streaming viewership dataset in order to maintain measurement independence and neutrality.
- Collaborate with the VAB and Association of National Advertisers to support their progress on measurement calibration, along with the support of key groups such as the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Interactive Advertising Bureau, Advertising Research Foundation and others.
