Addressable ad-tech company INVIDI has received certification from Project OAR to help bring addressability to over 11 million Vizio smart TVs via Discovery programming.
Project OAR, which stands for Open Addressable Ready, is a consortium led by Vizio that has set out to bring programmers, agencies and ad-tech companies together for standardized addressable television and to develop a solution for owners of TV ad inventory.
“The Project OAR consortium was designed to get everyone on the same page. All of the specs, everything from decisioning to measurement to watermarking, comes from OAR members,” said Adam Gaynor, VP of network partnerships at Vizio in an interview with Forbes. “And now that it’s up and running we can start bringing more inventory into the fold along with new partners.”
Addressable television advertising targets specific households versus programs, allowing for more granularity, control and efficiency.
For a TV industry that’s increasingly fragmented due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid adoption of streaming, the creation of a standardized addressable TV solution is undoubtedly needed.
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A 2021 study commissioned by INVIDI alongside Dish, Cadent, Comscore and others, found that brands in the U.S. spent $3.4 billion in addressable TV inventory in 2019. Moreover, 100% of 522 media-buying decision makers at agencies and major brands included in the study have faced challenges implementing addressable television.
Formed in March 2019, Project OAR’s founding members include some of the biggest names in the industry: Disney Media Networks, Comcast’s FreeWheel and NBCUniversal, Discover, CBS, Hearst Television, AMC Networks, AT&T's Xandr and Warner Media’s Turner.
INVIDI, however, has been working in the space since its founding in 2000 with a proprietary software that lets TV advertisers and media buyers accurately control reach, separation and frequency across video platforms, first in the United States and then globally in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Australia.
Since then, the company was purchased by AT&T, Dish and WPP in 2016 but still operates independently.
"The meaning of this news is that INVIDI's addressable ad tech now reaches 11+ million Vizio smart TVs in addition to the entire footprint of DirecTV, Dish and Verizon set-top boxes for WarnerMedia networks that are OAR-enable,” said Bruce Anderson, CTO at INVIDI Technologies. “INVIDI would welcome the opportunity to support additional programming networks. We power the linear addressability on all WarnerMedia programming as it is. So, this gains us entry into those 11.1 million Vizio TV sets through that programming."