Programmatic Perspectives: Addressability, Curation & CTV

Gil Sommer, VP of Global Product at OpenX, joined host Wayne Tassie, Chair of IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee and Group Director, Integrated Solutions at DoubleVerify on Programmatic Perspectives to discuss the latest trends and developments in the digital advertising ecosystem.

Listen to their chat here, and read on for the biggest takeaways from the conversation.

1. Differentiated SSPs are raising the stakes in sell-side curation

Curation has become a prominent tool in the advertising industry, frequently utilized across the supply chain for its varied benefits for buyers and sellers. 

When companies speak about curation, they’re essentially describing the strategic packaging of media for campaigns. However, what differentiates OpenX from other platforms is its ability to combine curation packages with specific business outcomes, such as maximizing ROI and ROAS for buyers. By enriching media inventory with data, our proprietary technology supports various identifiers, enabling multi-signal activation. This ensures that the right audience is reached, performance is accurately measured, and results are tied back to the campaign’s goals.

“We pioneered supply-side curation back in 2018 … and have built the most sophisticated curation platform [to] help buyers,” said Sommer. This supply-side graph integrates over 250 data partners, which allows buyers to onboard audience segments and activate highly targeted campaigns with precision and efficiency. OpenX continues to invest heavily in this area, recognizing the importance of delivering high-quality, curated inventory for buyers.

The open exchange also remains vital. While many buyers prefer curated deals for better measurement, reporting, and optimization, some buyers, like large CPG brands with wide audience bases, will continue to find success in the open exchange.

2. Interoperability is solving for signal loss

Authenticated users, deterministic IDs, probabilistic IDs, and contextual targeting solutions will all play crucial roles. The key to success will be interoperability, or technology partners like OpenX that can seamlessly integrate various identifiers to ensure consistent, accurate targeting and measurement across all platforms and environments.

The landscape is still evolving, and continued testing and collaboration among advertisers, publishers, data partners, and verification partners is essential. Each test provides valuable insights, driving actions that help maintain a thriving open internet. It’s important to understand that the transition away from cookies isn’t about finding a one-to-one replacement. Instead, it’s about changing how we track, segment, and reach different audiences when serving a digital ad.

“Signal loss has been happening for a while,” said Sommer. “If you think about environments like Safari and Firefox, [cookies] have been disabled for a very long time, and there are environments like CTV that inherently use different identifiers and signals.” A significant portion of programmatic today operates in such environments, so delaying action could mean missing out on critical opportunities to optimize targeting and performance.

This serves as an opportunity to reassess and refine existing methods in digital advertising since the practices of the past decade won’t be the best way of measuring ad performance in the future. Rather, we should look to outcomes-based metrics to drive campaign decisions.

3. Increased transparency is vital for the continued evolution of CTV

In CTV, advertisers often face challenges with opaque media buying processes, hidden intermediaries, and misclassified content, all of which can undermine campaign performance and inflate costs. As CTV grows in prominence, it becomes increasingly vital for industry players to prioritize transparency to ensure that ad dollars are spent efficiently. 

To address this, OpenX introduced TV by OpenX, the first programmatic initiative to unlock the full potential of biddable CTV. This ongoing initiative began by eliminating all resellers and non-TV content (fireplace apps, gaming, UGC, mobile, etc.) from our CTV offering, thereby ensuring buyers receive more working media and aren’t purchasing any unintentional inventory. It also guaranteed publishers receive a fair share of transactions, supporting the creation of high-quality content.

Further, buyers can leverage OpenX’s people-based graph to target audiences across direct inventory, increasing scale and optimizing campaign outcomes through their preferred DSP. OpenX also collaborates with industry organizations like the IAB and the IAB Tech Lab to develop standards that enhance transparency and provide more choice for all stakeholders.