In this edition of Insights from the Buy Side, Michael Guzewicz, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, OpenX, spoke with Sam White, Head of Addressability, Adtech Platforms, LiveRamp. Thanks for taking the time, Sam!
As Head of Addressability, Adtech Platforms at LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP), Sam White advocates for an open and interoperable internet and has struck product partnerships across LiveRamp’s addressability offerings that help partners mitigate their reliance on legacy device identifiers. Sam leads LiveRamp’s efforts to help develop the infrastructure across the ad tech ecosystem to support LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) and direct publisher integrations.
This change is an opportunity to fix digital advertising: We can now optimize for outcomes consistently across channels instead of using inefficient identifiers across web, CTV, and mobile that might not respect the consumer’s preferences for privacy nor offer them control.
Instead, brands can improve their omnichannel addressability, frequency management, and measurability all while giving consumers a better experience, building more personalized – and more transparent – relationships with them.
One of the ways that LiveRamp has leaned into this opportunity is with its Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS), a privacy-first solution that helps publishers and marketers transact without relying on third-party cookies or device-based identifiers. ATS enables publishers to match authenticated user data with LiveRamp’s pseudonymous identifier, RampID, enabling advertisers to better reach their audiences.
RampID is helping to solve for an increasingly signal-less world by:
The most common misconception about the deprecation of cookies is that it will spell the end of the ability for advertisers to reach their intended audience. This isn’t the case. While third-party cookies were once a powerful tool for digital advertising, better ways exist for advertisers to accurately reach their consumers, and savvy advertisers have already been working in cookieless browsers and mediums to reach the already-cookieless segment of the internet. In reality, this is a chance for all the stakeholders of the digital ads industry – publishers, advertisers, and the technology ecosystem that connects them – to build solutions from the ground up that will benefit consumers.
Publishers use ATS to improve monetization and leverage trusted relationships with their users to create a better experience. Marketers use ATS to reach their audiences more effectively, improve performance, and comply with global privacy regulations. Consumers receive a personalized and privacy-enhancing experience. A true win-win-win.
Supply-side targeting (SST) allows buyers to target their ads to specific audiences on publishers via their SSP partner. SST is becoming increasingly popular because it offers key advantages over other media-buying methods:
The LiveRamp and OpenX partnership is unique in a couple of ways. First, it is a global partnership that brings together two of the leading companies in the online advertising industry. Additionally, the partnership is designed to help publishers and marketers reach their audiences on their preferred publishers more effectively and efficiently with 100% measurability – allowing advertisers to activate and measure in 21 countries across the globe.
Through OpenX’s comprehensive use of LiveRamp’s identity, deep roots across publishers who have implemented LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution, and its connectivity from the LiveRamp platform for both first- and third-party data, advertisers working with LiveRamp can reach publishers working with OpenX using supply-side targeting that operates with scale, accuracy, and efficiency.
By bringing together LiveRamp’s best-in-class foundational identity, data collaboration, and data connectivity with OpenX’s best-in-class publisher network and supply-side activation capabilities, advertisers can be confident that working across the LiveRamp and OpenX platforms will yield media performance that drives business results. And better yet, advertisers can prove their results through the closed-loop measurement enabled by RampID activation.
OpenX maintains a large and growing network of premium publisher relationships across channels and devices that enables advertisers to reach users programmatically across the board. The capabilities layered on top of this around data and supply-side targeting in partnership with LiveRamp are all strong compliments contributing to efficiency, transparency, and ultimately performance toward the goals of an advertiser.
Over the past few years, the management, analysis, segmentation, and activation of first-party data has become table stakes for advertisers seeking meaningful results on their digital media spend. The most successful advertisers are now expanding their first-party strategies into the newer frontiers of data collaboration and people-based, closed-loop measurement.
By leveraging LiveRamp’s data collaboration platform, OpenX’s supply-side targeting for activation of RampID, and subsequently the online and offline closed-loop measurement enabled through RampID buying, advertisers can take their media strategies to new heights.
OpenX is among the first 10 companies to receive this recognition, earned for our transparency practices.
A fair and transparent value exchange ensures that buyers are able to optimize their campaign results by connecting with their consumers effectively. Transparency in advertising requires all facets of the ecosystem to work together to deliver and innovate on best practices.
To help set industry best practices around supply chain transparency, TAG (Trustworthy Accountability Group) recently announced their first-ever “Certified for Transparency” Seal. This seal recognizes companies with established transparency practices that provide buyers control and visibility.
OpenX is among the first 10 companies to receive the TAG Certified for Transparency Seal. OpenX was recognized for our demonstrated track record of protecting brand safety, providing transparency for buyers, and working to create a more transparent digital advertising ecosystem.
Achieving seal recognition requires compatibility with TAG TrustNet (which acts as a common transparency framework for participants across the supply chain), annual compliance training, employing and honoring Ads.txt and App-Ads.txt (direct sellers and intermediaries), and employing and maintaining Sellers.json (intermediaries).
To do this, OpenX took a novel approach. To ensure the security of our client’s data, TAG TrustNet only reviewed customer-provided log reports directly sourced from OpenX. Upon testing, OpenX’s existing log-level data was found to meet sufficient levels of transparency to provide the insights and reporting for buyers who choose TAG TrustNet to pursue log-level analysis.
OpenX has long provided advertisers with actionable insights and granular reporting that helps them measure against their KPIs with confidence, done through OpenX’s BIDs product. Any OpenX buyer can opt-in to OpenX’s BIDs product to receive their log-level data and granular insights into their programmatic campaigns. To ensure maximum campaign and data privacy, BIDs is accessed via a secure environment.
Any advertiser who wishes to have their log-level data tested for efficiency can send their data in its existing format to TAG for end-to-end analysis of their logs at no cost.
This nuanced approach provides visibility for both the industry and OpenX advertisers — while allowing OpenX clients to maintain control over who sees their logs and what actions are taken with them.
A Consistent, Customized Approach to MFA Leads to Increased Audience Curation for Buyers.
Often marked by overlapping ad placements around content, “evergreen” articles that lack a listed post date and aren’t updated often, and no author or publisher information included on the articles or on the site, made for advertising (MFA) sites have become an increasing source of consternation in digital advertising.
As the number of MFA domains grows, the ecosystem lacks an industry-wide standard for defining MFA. Without alignment across the programmatic landscape on how to define and detect low-quality inventory, no one can wave a magic wand to eliminate MFA from the marketplace altogether.
Because of this, it’s important to have tools in place that allow buyers to take action on MFA. Increased transparency in the buying process allows marketers to take an active stance on the quality of media they are purchasing while recognizing that not all buyers universally agree on what constitutes MFA.
Over the past year, OpenX has been implementing processes to identify and categorize MFA sites in its deals as well as for any new publishers looking to work with OpenX.
To build a layer of standardization, OpenX has partnered with Jounce Media, a leading source for consistent definitions of inventory quality standards. By doing so, the company is taking an important step in prioritizing inventory quality, sustainability, and customer satisfaction. Through this effort between the OpenX’s Marketplace Quality teams and Jounce Media, OpenX has started to block known MFA traffic on Auction Packages running through OpenX.
“A growing number of brands and agencies are finding that MFA inventory is a poor use of campaign funds,” said Chris Kane, Founder, Jounce Media. “This dimension of supply-side targeting and audience curation by OpenX protects buyers and reflects the company’s commitment to building a quality and sustainable marketplace.”
Because there is no single, definitive list of MFA domains, some buyers may have different proprietary sets of domains they wish to include or exclude. For this reason, it’s important for buyers to be empowered to leverage their own MFA domain lists alongside a consistently defined and industry-established source such as Jounce Media’s. The result is a step toward standardization without disallowing customization in what buyers define as MFA.
In a pilot of this approach, OpenX and MiQ, a leading programmatic media partner for marketers and agencies, worked together to remove MFA from all deals with MiQ. To accomplish this, MiQ provided their own customized MFA list, which was then paired with the existing list of domains designated as MFA by Jounce Media. Rather than simply eliminating MFA that appeared on one list, OpenX was able to combine the two lists and exclude any domains that appeared on either list.
OpenX leverages the Jounce Media MFA domain list as the standard baseline, and in its continued commitment to inventory quality and transparency, the SSP has committed to eliminating MFA domains in all direct-sold deals by default.
“In creating a powerful combination of industry standards and buyer-specific input in identifying and blocking MFA domains in direct deals, OpenX is making it easier for buyers to curate audiences while prioritizing inventory quality, sustainability, and customer satisfaction across direct deals,” said Matt Sattel, SVP of Buyer Development, OpenX.
By excluding any domains that appeared on either Jounce Media’s or MiQ’s MFA list, OpenX was able to increase the number of MFA domains excluded by 37 percent.
In a single day, MiQ and OpenX were able to identify and eliminate nearly 1600 unique domains from direct deals. Of the domains eliminated, less than one-third appeared on both MiQ’s and Jounce Media’s lists, serving as a reminder that when various parts of the ecosystem work together, we can maximize potential.
“To-date we’ve had to identify & exclude MFA inventory manually across our campaigns, but with our SSP partners now helping remove MFA upstream, MiQ and our clients can have additional peace of mind on ongoing inventory quality and suitability,” said Lara Koenig, Global Head of Product, MiQ. “We’re grateful to have a partner like OpenX that’s responsive to feedback and that we can collaborate on projects with to make the industry more effective.”
By empowering MiQ to automate MFA exclusion in a way that is both standardized and applies nuance, OpenX is providing a solution that makes it simpler for buyers to curate their audiences effectively.
We’re MiQ, a leading programmatic media partner for marketers and agencies. We connect data from multiple sources to do interesting, exciting, business problem-solving things for our clients. We’re experts in data science, analytics and programmatic trading, and our team of people are always ready to react and solve challenges quickly, to make sure you’re always spending your media investments on the right things in the right places. You can find out more here: wearemiq.com.
Jounce Media is the industry leader in programmatic supply path optimization and is trusted by the world’s largest brands, agencies, media companies, and advertising technology platforms to enable high efficiency programmatic trades. Through industry-leading research and fully transparent supply chain data, Jounce arms buyers and sellers with an information advantage to identify and avoid value-extracting RTB auctions. Learn more at jouncemedia.com.
At Cannes this year, OpenX took the stage with leading partners and clients to conduct three panels on some of the hottest topics in ad tech. Here are the highlights from our CTV: Demand Addressability From Your Media panel.
Moderated by Tony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab, the group discussed how close our industry really is to reaching target audiences in high-quality adaptive viewing environments. The panel included:
Tony kicked off the panel by asking for some CTV definitions. Abbie Reichner, VP of Programmatic Strategy and Operations, Fox Corporation, explained that “It’s all becoming television, and so we believe that CTV is the same as the big screen.”
Jay Freedman, CEO, Goodway Group, posited that it’s more about the size of the screen, whether audiences are leaning in or leaning back, and what the targetability is. That way, the definition is less important. Jim Sink, GVP Partnerships, Oracle added that what matters is what you can and can’t do with the combination of the device itself and the device connecting it because it has to do with how you can target and measure.
Tony added that because CTV is not commoditized as much as display ads on programmatic, it’s possible CTV inventory could earn much more money due to the limited supply.
Tony then asked the panel about the role of measurement with CTV taking on a bigger role in the media buy.
Jay shared that Goodway Group aggregates buying across more than 60 agencies to increase their buying power and that measurement tools are only useful if advertisers do the work to connect them to their initial media goals and approach. He added that there are wildly different metrics for different categories, stages, channels, and personas, which means it’s critical to track measurement backward from the personas and other key indicators.
Jim added that Oracle looks at measurement and targeting together. For instance, if an advertiser is targeting identifiers for advertising, which are connected to CTV, they can measure well, but they need to connect the measurement back to an element that drove the media buy.
He then noted the challenge of understanding who has the rights to the measurement data. “Clearly publishers should be able to understand the value of their media, but on the other side of the coin, the buyer needs to know what their performance is through the long and complex supply chain,” he said.
Abbie noted that with so many measurement companies, it’s important to manage that to service the client. She added within one publisher, there is a lot of fragmentation, not just across publishers. The Joint Industry Committee, created by a number of top publishers, is focused on common measurement and better standards.
Abbie continued, “Fox has CTV, linear, digital, and many partners like Sling, Direct TV and that creates some sales confusion.” Each partner has different rules and packages across different channels. Within the need to standardize, there’s also the need to fix the technical issues to reconcile more smoothly.
Geoff Wolinetz, SVP of Demand Platforms, OpenX, asked the group, “If we can’t agree what standards are correct, how will we agree how to measure? There are a number of companies in the measurement space for CTV that are behaving like walled gardens. How can we measure across platforms? At some point, we need to understand what someone is viewing on Roku compared to a viewer on Fox linear or Apple TV.”
He added that OpenX is working to take information about a user as well as other signals and provide the ability to buy based on those signals. The next step is to provide more standardized, intelligent measurement as well.
Tony shared that there is a difference between currency and measurement, adding that the IAB Tech Lab created the Advanced TV “Commit” Group, and are leaning into the ATSC3 watermark to act as a reconciliation token. Creating a common currency for the ecosystem to transact could allow individual measurement providers to then connect to that.
Geoff agreed that everyone will want their own currency, having a “foreign exchange” is what the IAB solution can provide.
At Fox, curating inventory across digital and linear requires a unified sales team, Abbie shared. Cross-platform plans are in-demand. Taking linear audiences and getting that incremental reach with digital extension as a package is the first step, but having so many different platforms can make it complex.
Abbie noted that, “The ideal state would be to transact on an audience across any channel or screen. Fox is now in the planning stage, but that’s what we’re building toward.”
Jay emphasized that audience is not everything: Content matters and placement matters. Testing can be the best way to understand what placements work the best across audience, content and placement.
To conclude the conversation, Tony asked the panel to make a few predictions around upfronts. Jim predicted that the upfronts will still exist in the future, but how buys are executed might change. The upfronts are about the content and getting brands thinking about the value of content.
Jay emphasized that, “You can’t suppress people’s need to create value by creating pre-packaged deals early on. While the upfronts will exist, brands are wanting to talk about value sooner, and that will work its way into the upfronts.” He said he also hopes that incrementality and growth will be the focus.
Abbie shared that she believes that a futures market will still be here, and that the upfronts matter along with TV, not just CTV.
Geoff rounded out the predictions with his thought that linear addressable and CTV will only be cheaper if they can be bought in bulk, adding that highly targeted buying will be more expensive. As a final thought, he added that FAST is also a big growth driver for the space and next year may play a bigger role at Cannes.
Contact us at BuyerDevelopment@openx.com.
At Cannes this year, OpenX took the stage with leading partners and clients to conduct three panels on some of the hottest topics in ad tech. Here are the highlights from our Supply-Side Targeting: Demand Addressability From Your Media panel.
Moderated by Ronan Shields of Digiday, the group discussed the actions that advertisers are taking to work directly with SSPs to activate audiences in new ways. The panel included:
Matt Sattel, SVP of Global Buyer Development, OpenX, kicked off the conversation noting that generally, the core driver of identity is privacy. The fact that governments and large platforms are pushing advertising toward a new privacy standard makes advertisers rethink their approach to buying. Matt, Ben, and Ash all agreed that one complexity in this evolution is the tech stack itself, which isn’t necessarily designed for identity.
Matt noted that the role of the SSP is changing to satisfy buyers’ interest in identity. Privacy matters, and the entire ecosystem needs to work together to create a better plan for a future without third-party cookies. “I don’t think anyone can solve it by themselves,” he added.
Ben Hovaness, SVP of Marketplace Intelligence, Omnicom Media Group North America, shared that OMG has evolved how they work with supply-side partners. What’s changed the most is that they work directly with SSPs to bring value to clients beyond the basics of something like a take rate cap to create savings. To evolve their partnerships with SSPs even further, OMG tests new signals, including Google’s Privacy Sandbox and AMIs. He also emphasized the importance of collaborating with SSPs on product development to solve for specific client needs.
Ash Grant, Global Head of Digital Trading, Expedia Group Media, added that his team leans heavily on SSP partners because their resources in-house are a bit smaller than the big agency buyers. Like many other advertisers, they’re trying to do more with less, so partnering with leading SSPs provides a lot of added value.
Crystal Jacques, Head of Publisher and Supply Side Partnerships, Experian, shared that Experian now has a vertical to support bringing data such as identity data and demographic data to the supply side, which has seen a huge uptake by the sell side.
Ronan brought up the recent ANA report, which suggests that the supply side needs some “tidying up.” To fix this complexity, panelists discussed their strategies. Ash pointed out that embedding more closely with the supply side helps increase accountability. “You can only be as good as your toolset, and we select those tools very carefully,” he said.
Matt added that a strong partner can go deeper and understand what content is actually in each bucket as well as how to bid more strategically, sharing that OpenX can provide guidance to avoid non-premium inventory. The more SSPs can provide transparency in buying strategies, the more confident and effective buyers can be with their spend.
Ash shared that CPM is only one small part of the considerations of their media-buying strategy. If his team can show incrementality and ROI, then they are willing to pay more for quality, especially if they’re in a position to commit more upfront to get a better price. “Buy cheap, pay twice,” he concluded.
As the conversation pivoted back to privacy, Crystal shared that her team has had time to prepare for the eventual deprecation of third-party cookies, and that they are poised to be the connective tissue across new identifiers like UID and ID5 as well as MAIDS, hashed emails, and other IDs. “It’s important to understand what IDs are out there, what data we have, and enrich those IDs with data to get where we want to be,” she said.
Ben added that his team looks at IDs across tiers of signal strength. People talk about cookie deprecation as though it hasn’t happened yet, but “Apple wiped out third-party cookies on Safari, which in many markets is not a big deal. But in the United States, that’s about 40 percent of all browser activity,” he said.
Ash shared that Expedia has an incredible amount of travel data, and from a media perspective, there are complications for using the data. Expedia will be launching a loyalty program and managing and activating that program using identifiers by onboarding their first-party data to promote loyalty. That kind of process requires having the right solutions and partners to succeed, he added.
In response to an audience question about DSP targeting vs. supply-side targeting, Crystal shared that Experian has integrated with DSPs where targeting has lived traditionally, but there is increased adoption on the SSP side. While they don’t want to cannibalize, integrating on both sides gives buyers more choice and they can target audiences more effectively by layering targeting in multiple places.
To conclude the panel, Ben noted that the advantage with SSP targeting is that you’re not losing signal. “The reality is that technical details like QPS rate limits what the DSPs can see. “By targeting directly on the SSP side we can drive higher performance,” he said.
Contact us at BuyerDevelopment@openx.com.
At Cannes this year, OpenX took the stage with leading partners and clients to conduct three panels on some of the hottest topics in ad tech. Here are the highlights from our Demand Sustainability From Your Media panel.
Moderated by John Osborn, lead advisor at Sharethrough and Director of Ad Net Zero, industry leaders discussed a subject that’s been core to OpenX’s identity over the past five years – sustainability. The panel included:
John began by emphasizing the importance of measuring against specific emissions goals, noting that all Ad Net Zero members must have Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) goals in place within the next twelve months. He then asked the panelists how the industry can tackle climate change, not only from the top down, but with a “bottom-up” approach, which helps create viable sustainability solutions for every part of the marketplace.
Andy Batkin, Founder and CEO, Duration Media, shared that the EU now requires a third-party verified report of carbon emissions and that the US will soon follow suit. He continued that as an industry, we need to focus on third-party verification of our carbon reduction, adding that taking action now is better than waiting for the perfect solution, urging, “Do something, don’t wait.”
Anne Coghlan, Co-founder and COO, Scope3, noted that while some approaches and solutions are very industry-specific, ad tech doesn’t exist in a bubble. External experts and protocols such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol exist that we all have the opportunity to learn and build from rather than making things up on our own. She nodded to OpenX as a prime example of an ad tech company that has connected to the larger sustainability standards and frameworks available.
Amanda Forrester, Vice President of Marketing, OpenX, shared that OpenX’s path to Net-Zero was part of a larger strategy to transfer to the cloud, which in turn reduced their energy consumption. As the company investigated sustainability initiatives, they became dedicated to measuring and setting goals according to accepted global standards, with the goal of delivering better business results while being better for the environment.
John noted that there are both opportunities and barriers to contend with when it comes to sustainability. In response, Lauren Douglass, CMO, PMG, shared that PMG recently released their first sustainability report, which found that their GHG emissions increased year-over-year due to business growth and a return to the office post-Covid. Despite the increase, they are proud to release the report and are addressing the information that they uncovered with that reporting. She noted for the group that media investments, the impact of offices, and travel are key places to start to reduce emissions.
Amanda agreed that emissions reduction is not a linear path, adding that companies need to balance business growth with emissions and be aware of that interplay. She noted that even with an increase year-over-year, OpenX has reduced its emissions by 95% since its base reporting year of 2018.
Anne appreciated that companies within the programmatic ecosystem are putting out public sustainability reports to map the emissions across the entire supply chain, adding that companies will need to adhere to this process and not succumb to greenwashing – if emissions go up, we need to be comfortable reporting it. “The more companies that put out sustainability reports, the more granular we can be with mapping where emissions are coming from to enable brands and agencies to make media-buying decisions,” Anne observed.
She noted that “learning in public” can be hard in such a competitive market, but it’s encouraging that so many companies are willing to do it anyway.
Andy shared that Duration Media looked at how to reduce waste by making sure that the first ad goes from the typical 100 bid requests to just one, noting that this insight was something they could fix immediately to make their company more efficient.
Amanda shared that OpenX provides options for buyers to eliminate MFA in their spend, adding that not being the biggest SSP is not only intentional but also beneficial in this case. Going a step beyond supply-path optimization with green deal IDs can provide a more streamlined media buy. She continued that, ”most of the SSPs carry similar websites, so buyers can get to the same impression from multiple channels. Having fewer SSP calls is a good thing.”
Anne agreed and noted that when one website has 28,000 server calls, that’s hundreds of SSPs and DSPs being called, which is incredibly wasteful.
Andy added that publishers need to look at their ads.txt to determine how to optimize their setup. As sustainability efforts across the industry spark inspiration for publishers, the cost issue remains, but reducing ad calls and bid requests saves on cloud costs.
As the conversation progressed, John urged the audience to start setting and committing to meaningful goals within the next year using resources like those from Ad Net Zero and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media while partnering with companies that are focused on sustainability in advertising.
Amanda then asked Lauren how buyers are thinking about sustainability for 2023 and 2024. Lauren responded that her path forward is a focus on more than just programmatic. She shared, “We want to look at the picture of our entire investment. If we look at our media mix model, we want to not only look at performance, we want to look at sustainability, too.”
An audience member asked Lauren whether buyers still have tough goals from CMOs. She replied that, “PMG is very performance-oriented, so we are focused on cutting out waste. This year and next year, people may be less interested in spending budget to test big shiny things and focused on performance drivers, which luckily can go hand in hand with sustainability.”
To close out the panel, Anne shared that Scope3 ran pilots to test whether factoring sustainability into their media buying would affect performance. The finding was that performance was either flat or improved as a result of bringing in sustainability. Anne noted that, “There is an education that has to happen to show how sustainability can be good for business.”
Find out more at openx.com/sustainability or contact us at BuyerDevelopment@openx.com.
The IAB Tech Lab has updated digital video definitions, which will have a significant impact on both publishers and advertisers. Specifically, it could reduce the amount of video that publishers can sell as instream and it will provide advertisers with greater transparency into what they are buying.
In recent years, millions of viewers have transitioned from watching linear TV to newer video channels, such as digital and CTV. The convergence of video and TV has resulted in the IAB revising their definition of instream video to better support clarity across the ad industry.
Under the revised parameters, the IAB aims to ensure that instream ads provide a more immersive viewing experience, similar to traditional TV. Regardless of whether the video ad is a part of long-form or short-form content, by the updated definition, it needs to be a part of the core viewing experience with sound on or clear viewer intent to watch.
For example, a user visits a webpage to read an article about the New York Knicks’ playoff performance. As they scroll, a video player within the article begins to play content about the rise in online sports betting, featuring a pre-roll ad for a sports betting service. Although this video content might seem related to the Knicks and sports, it’s not directly about the Knicks’ playoff run, which is what the user originally intended to view. According to the new IAB definition, this would not be considered instream inventory. Instead, it would be classified as “Accompanying Content.”
The updated video definitions provide advertisers with more granularity and transparency into what they are buying and puts a spotlight on video in general. For savvy advertisers, there could be substantial opportunities to purchase high-quality video that may not be classified as instream (like that New York Knicks example). However, these changes may also mean additional efforts are needed for advertisers to strike a balance between CPM and performance when executing CTV and online video campaigns.
The key change many publishers will experience is a reduction of inventory currently defined as instream. This shift may affect overall revenue, making it more important than ever for publishers to partner with supply-side platforms with technical capabilities that can help them monetize all types of video inventory.
Additionally, the reduction of inventory defined as instream video may drive up instream CPMs as brands compete for a smaller inventory pool.
Ultimately, publishers will need to incorporate these market changes into their future video monetization strategies. With CPMs for non-instream video potentially decreasing, at least in the short term, publishers will need to be more creative about how they deliver value for advertisers willing to look beyond instream.
One tactic that publishers can employ to increase the value of non-instream video inventory is to leverage advanced supply-side data-targeting capabilities. This will help advertiser’s eliminate waste within their buys and reach their desired audience. Publishers can also use contextual targeting to boost user engagement by pairing ads with relevant content. Both strategies can help publishers maximize yield while also providing advertisers with higher ROI.
As part of an ongoing commitment to industry standardization and transparency, OpenX has implemented technical changes to support the new IAB video definitions. The new ‘plcmt’ field is currently available within the bidstream. Additionally, the team is monitoring and has begun to see publishers declaring the new field on their inventory. OpenX will continue to support the legacy placement field to accommodate all publisher partners during the transition, understanding adoption timelines will vary by organization and could be on the longer end for our publishers who have limited technical resources.
As publishers and marketers rethink their video strategies there are many ways that they both can positively impact their businesses with opportunities provided by the new IAB video definitions. Specifically, both publishers and marketers can work with OpenX to simplify the process of targeting campaigns through data-driven Deal IDs that can be activated in an advertiser’s DSP of choice.
Reach out to our team to learn more about how we’re supporting the updated IAB Video definitions or about leveraging OpenX supply-side targeting capabilities to support instream or non-instream inventory.
Six Things You Can Do To Start Building More Sustainable Businesses
Sustainability in advertising and media is particularly important because of the cultural influence that both of these industries have on us personally and our business practices. Collectively, we must do more than market sustainability. We need to do the work to become sustainable, and identify objective industry and global standards. OpenX is sharing our story to help companies in our space accelerate their existing initiatives and to show that achieving Net-Zero targets are achievable.
OpenX set a Net-Zero target to reduce scope 1+2+3 emissions by 90% by 2027 from a 2018 base year including holding ourselves to a 1.5 degree standard, and recently received validation from the global consultancy RSK that we’ve achieved our Net-Zero goals in line with the SBTi standard five years ahead of schedule. In fact, we’ve reduced our carbon footprint by 96% since 2018.
So how do you start becoming a more sustainable business?
In digital, we’re all new to the ins and outs of sustainability. It’s critical to have an internal stakeholder that’s empowered by the leadership team (or someone who is on the leadership team), but it’s likely you’ll also need to tap experts that have experience with measuring and accounting for carbon emissions.
Early on, we started working with sustainability consultant Bill Wescott for his detailed knowledge about the steps and actions we would have to take to actually audit, measure and reduce our emissions.
It’s important that in advertising we don’t “grade our own homework.” As part of the advertising supply chain SSPs are part of the “Scope 3” emissions that ultimately roll up to the brands’ own emissions calculations. This fact alone should be enough for all of us to get serious about providing credible measurable reporting around emissions and ensures brands and ultimately their clients understand how we are all working together for a collective common good.
We retained RSK, a consultancy to validate our efforts. Additionally, we contracted a leading accredited third-party verifier of greenhouse gas inventories, LRQA (formerly known as Lloyd’s Registry), to verify the GHG inventory under the ISO 14064-3:2019 standard so that the verified OpenX GHG inventory could be publicly reported and shared directly with key stakeholders.
Brands, publishers and tech companies want to become more sustainable, but we need to use the right approach — and that requires standardization, measurable emissions, and transparent reporting that accounts for the entire carbon footprint of a business.
At OpenX, we have had our sights on transparent, measurable sustainability for some time. While it takes work and investment, we’re here to show that companies can dramatically improve their carbon footprint.
Start With A Greenhouse Gas Inventory (GHG) — the EPA defines a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory as “a list of emission sources and the associated emissions quantified using standardized methods.” These inventories are used by a variety of entities, including scientists, policymakers, regulatory agencies and corporations.
Why conduct and maintain a greenhouse gas inventory? Such inventories are useful to:
Start taking steps to roll out your plan. We took a variety of steps, some large and some small, making changes across different elements of our business concurrently. For example, our engineering team led our migration to GCP, which is powered by renewable energy. Our HR and operations departments worked to consolidate our office footprint and make changes to our travel policies and remote-work policies to reduce commuting. We also cloud-enabled our office infrastructure to reduce electricity consumption. The remaining emissions – created by energy used by work-from-home employees, for example — are offset by investments in high-quality carbon removal projects.
Measuring a reduction in emissions is an extension of the initial measurement of overall emissions, and the same rigor is required. It’s important to use a credible third-party who can measure emissions so that it can be reported to government bodies, customers and partners. The more we use standard measurement frameworks and adopt reporting best practices, the faster we can move the needle on sustainability. As we get in the habit of measuring results and moving forward to reach the next level of sustainability, the greater the collective momentum.
To get started, download our ebook, or read more about our journey in this Adweek article.
“Sustainability has shifted from the margins, and niche projects, to a CEO and boardroom conversation about corporate purpose, growth and future strategy,” write Microsoft and dentsu in their groundbreaking report, “The Rise of Sustainable Media.”
We agree. OpenX didn’t set out to become a Net-Zero leader. Our goal back in 2018 was to drive efficiency in our operations by moving them to the cloud. Of course efficiency also means energy efficiency, and we lowered our carbon emissions dramatically — much more than we ever anticipated. When we realized that Net-Zero was well within our grasp, we set out to enlist climate leaders to help us verify our reductions, continue to reduce, and help us play a leadership role in the sector. Today, sustainability is one of the most important aspects of the OpenX brand.
One of the more gratifying aspects of our journey was realizing how many resources were readily available to us. As we benefited from the decades-long work of experts and other sectors, it became clear that the ad sector needs to collaborate to achieve the necessary reductions. It is hard work on a new topic, but here’s the thing: nothing motivates people more than taking meaningful action to leave the planet in a better place for future generations.
For this reason, we’re happy to share these strategies, gathered from numerous conversations with industry leaders, for greening up your campaigns.
The first step is to ensure your executive team is on board. Their commitment is vital, because sustainability demands we change the way the entire advertising ecosystem does business. We need to make the sort of changes that will have a meaningful impact that can scale.
Getting their commitment shouldn’t be too hard, mind you. To begin, a drive towards sustainability is a drive towards efficiency and cost reductions, as we’ll see below. Moreover, the investment community has made it clear that sustainable companies are the ones with a solid future, and are worth investing in. All of the metrics the board and C-suite care about are positively affected by sustainability.
Next, you’ll need to calculate your carbon footprint. As Stephen Woodford, CEO of the UK Advertising Association, explains: “You can’t reduce your footprint or establish a pathway if you don’t know where you stand. You need to look at your own operations and where emissions are generated.”
If you’re new to sustainability, there are three “scopes,” or carbon emission categories, that come into play. The EPA defines these scopes as:
Fair enough, but how does one go about measuring these scopes? “Scope 1 and Scope 2 are easier to measure, and there are plenty of rules-of-thumb companies can rely on. For instance, pre-pandemic, an office-based business or a service-based business had a carbon footprint around about three, to three and a half tons of carbon a year per employee,” Stephen explained.
Meanwhile, the EPA provides a calculator to help you measure your Scope 2 emissions.
Calculating your Scope 3 emissions is a bit trickier, but luckily, we see some big players in our industry stepping up to the task. For instance, GroupM has announced a framework to calculate the admissions of campaigns, as did AdGreen, a carbon-reduction initiative of the UK Advertising Agency. Check them out! These calculators are open to anyone who wants to use them.
“We encourage people to sign up to externally validated targets or science-based targets that are in the public domain and to commit publicly to an end goal, with measurement and reporting along the way to that end goal,” said Stephen Woodford.
In a previous blog post, we discussed the internet’s dirty secret: it’s a carbon hog, on par with the airline industry. But unlike the most carbon-hungry sectors, we have some low-hanging fruit that delivers big impacts.
First, switch to renewable energy, which is one of the easier ways to lower your Scope 2 emissions. Oftentimes the electric company from whom you purchase power offers renewable energy as an option, so lowering your emissions is as simple as making a phone call. In the unlikely event that they don’t, you can contract directly with a renewable energy provider. Companies can also limit travel, and choose to work with partners that have reduced their own carbon footprints. For example, some brands are shifting to work with virtual studios to reduce the carbon footprint of photo shoots.
“Production is a big part of our industry’s carbon footprint. Creating the actual advertising content generates an enormous amount of carbon, so it’s a rich area to look at when we want to lower emissions and work towards Net-Zero,” explains Stephen Woodward. If you must travel to a location, consider limiting the support staff you fly out, and hire local resources instead.
Reconsider some of the ad features, such as turning off auto-play and lessening the onsite data load for your campaign. These considerations, according to Stephen Woodward, can make a profound difference.
Finally, choose smarter delivery options for your campaigns. Work with ad-tech providers and websites that have made substantial gains in lowering their carbon emissions or even achieved CarbonNeutralⓇ status, as OpenX has done.
In addition to our overall sustainability, OpenX offers:
“I think what OpenX has done over the last four years is incredibly impressive. It just shows that by putting sustainability front and center and letting it drive how you set up your business and provide services to your customers can make an enormous difference. OpenX has reduced its carbon footprint by more than 90%. This is a massive, massive savings,” said Stephen Woodford.
While OpenX has led with facts on the ground, we are also helping to raise awareness that there are many leaders reducing emissions in different ways. OpenX hosted two sustainability panels in Cannes and heard first-hand from advertisers who have committed to reducing carbon. These marketers told us that they still continue to optimize around all the campaign metrics we’re familiar with: audience, price and quality of exposure. Adding carbon to their lists of KPIs to optimize on had no negative impact on campaign performance.
“Once you start to factor carbon in and choose the most efficient and effective sites, you can have a six times better carbon footprint,” Stephen Woodward explained. Why six times? That’s the differential between campaigns that gobble up carbon and those that are sustainable. “You can do all this without any compromise on performance.”
Imagine a time when advertisers know the carbon impact of every site and ad unit before they make any production or media buying decisions. This insight will enable them to make carbon-smart decisions early on in the process, to the benefit of all humanity.
Find out more at openx.com/sustainability or contact us at BuyerDevelopment@openx.com.
We’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Permutive. This partnership will enable buyers and sellers to build and activate global audiences without using third-party cookies or device IDs while still preserving the safety and security of user data. The partnership creates a global infrastructure to supply streamlined access to first-party data for programmatic advertising, making identity-based buying easier and more scalable than ever.
The privacy-safe offering is easily enabled through OpenX Deal IDs, and audience targeting relies on privacy-protected, first-party publisher data. With Permutive, OpenX unlocks the 70% of inventory that is not targetable using third-party cookies.
Buyers can choose from more than 200 standardized behavioral cohorts, evaluated in real time, across categories including real estate, travel, automotive, pets, and fashion and beauty. Cohorts are mapped to the industry-standard IAB Audience Taxonomy that identifies and describes segmented audiences based on similar interests, characteristics and behaviors.
OpenX is the leading data and identity partner for the world’s largest media buyers and publishers, and this partnership provides even more seamless reach at a global scale. With fully addressable audience segments, buyers are empowered to reach their audiences more accurately and more effectively with the publishers that matter.
About Permutive
Permutive empowers publishers and advertisers to address all of their audiences in the moment, whilst protecting privacy and respecting consumer consent. Our Audience Platform enables publishers and advertisers to activate audiences responsibly at scale and effectively use first-party data, without ever exposing consumers’ personal information. Permutive is listed in YCombinator’s Top 150 companies of all time and is trusted by the world’s largest publishers and advertisers, including News Corp, Hearst, BuzzFeed, Penske Media, Future plc, The Guardian, Vox Media, Insider, Hubert Burda Media and Condé Nast International. Find out more at www.permutive.com.
OpenX is honored to be named a finalist in this year’s Shorty Impact Awards. This international program is dedicated to celebrating purpose-driven work from brands, agencies and nonprofits that make the world a better place — and OpenX has been working hard to do that with our “Path to Net-Zero” initiative.
This powerful sustainability initiative earned us a finalist spot in the Corporate Social Responsibility category. We’re celebrating the status and asking for votes toward the Audience Honor award at the in-person event.
OpenX’s “Path to Net-Zero” is part of a long-term strategic initiative that kicked off in 2018 to produce a transformational reduction of carbon emissions in our own business and across the digital advertising industry. It’s a necessary and doable task — one that requires real business change.
For OpenX’s part, we have taken massive and impactful steps toward eliminating our carbon footprint. We shifted to the Google Cloud Platform for its efficiency, scalability, and operationally carbon-neutral status. We stepped into remote working, office downsizing, and limited travel. We inventoried our greenhouse gas emissions, engaged a third party for verification and set Net-Zero targets. Through all of this, OpenX reduced emissions by more than 90% and became the first and only ad exchange to achieve independent, third-party, CarbonNeutral® certification.
These sustainability results aren’t just about OpenX: They ripple out to OpenX’s clients, the advertising industry, the technology world and businesses at large. Our transparency about the process, our willingness to share our lessons and the changes we’ve made to our business partnerships help push forward global sustainability goals. We’re proud to be recognized by the Shorty Impact Awards.
Vote for our Path to Net-Zero initiative to support our efforts.
It was clear at Advertising Week New York that media buyers and publishers understand that sustainability is a necessary foundation for their work, and they’re working hard to find solutions to reduce their carbon footprints. OpenX is committed to sustainability, not just for our own company but for our customers and partners, too. We know that things get complicated quickly. Knowing how to actually make a measurable impact can be tough.
Our recently published eBook on sustainability, Getting Smart on Sustainability in Adtech, covers the information to help you ask the right questions, take the right steps and choose the right partners.
We’ve drawn from our experience as the first and only ad exchange to achieve CarbonNeutral® certification, as a signer to the Science Based Targets initiative and as sustainable-product innovators. The eBook pulls together details across the complicated world of tech sustainability and distills them into a digestible, actionable framework. We’ve laid out the most important terms, standards and methodologies being used at a global scale. We’ve dug into how they apply to the adtech world. We’ve provided actionable insights you can use to make informed choices.
Here’s some of what the eBook covers:
Carbon emissions occur all along the digital supply chain, from the data processing and storage that occurs at data centers to the data transfers required for loading ads to the energy consumed by end-user devices. SeenThis estimates that 40 billion digital impressions will emit 8,000 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of 200 million plastic bags.
The impact of advertising on carbon emissions and the environment is significant, but there is a way forward.
The first step to reducing emissions is to rely on The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which outlines the three types of emissions to be measured and reduced. Scope 1 covers the direct emissions from company-owned assets, such as factories and vehicles. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions, including electricity use. Scope 3 covers emissions not directly owned or produced by the company but created by business activity.
Reducing all three types of emissions requires real business change — adjusting supply chains, production steps and capital investments. For OpenX, it meant becoming the first and only ad exchange to achieve CarbonNeutral® certification. Reducing Scope 3 emissions requires that teams ask their partners tough questions, measure new metrics and ensure their sustainability priorities align.
The key to sustainability results is tackling the issue with the right partners. In our eBook, we lay out practical tips for choosing the right partnerships and ensuring your current partners are meeting your standards and goals.
Any actual, measurable and impactful changes require real business adjustments. To get there, you need clarity and confidence — and our eBook can give you that.
Find the full eBook here.