NEW YORK — Discovery, Inc. has become a minority owner of OpenAP, the advanced advertising company serving the television industry.
Discovery joins FOX, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS in the joint venture.
The investment signals an expansion of Discovery’s existing relationship with OpenAP, having integrated with OpenID in April 2021 and more recently partnering with OpenAP on the launch of XPm, the TV publisher backed cross-platform measurement framework.
“The commitment to OpenAP furthers Discovery’s strategy of building a technical framework that enables cross-platform audience-based buying and creating collaborative support for alternative currency standards,” OpenAP says, adding that it will help further its ability to grow the overall market for audience-based advertising ‘and expand the breadth and scale of its services across cross-platform identity, measurement and planning.”
Discovery Chief U.S. Advertising Sales Officer Jon Steinlauf and Jim Keller, EVP/Digital Ad Sales and Advanced Advertising, will each represent the company on OpenAP’s Board of Directors.
Additionally, Discovery will be able to contribute to OpenAP’s corporate strategy and product roadmap, while gaining further operational and technical efficiencies by activating audiences centrally through OpenAP.
“Discovery is excited to take an active role shaping the future of advanced audience buying,” Keller said. “Given our current momentum, influence and growth of audience-based sales, we believe Discovery can help further the work OpenAP has been doing to initiate meaningful change in the market.”
OpenAP works with more than 100 advertisers following the 2019 launch of the OpenAP Market with centralized advanced audiences able to be distributed to all national TV publishers regardless of platform.
