OpenAP CEO David Levy Is Engaging Consumers with Compelling Advertising

A Focus on Viewer EngagementAt his previous company TrueX which he cofounded and later sold to Fox the challenge at the time was thatamp160quotwith the advent of digital advertising we were in an unfortunate cycle of just putting more and more messaging in front of consumers and not actually getting quality attention because people were finding ways of avoiding the advertisingquot he recalledamp160 As a result advertising effectiveness declined as did the pricing and quotthe only way to make enough money was by adding more ads per pagequotamp160 His solution he saidamp160was to focus on quotthe most premium form of attentionquot which was dubbed an quotengagement adquotEngagement ads are fullscreen experiences where the consumer is incentivized to interact with the ad for at least 30 secondsamp160 quotWe did a lot of work on the science of attention and how to drive quality interaction while offering consumers a better user experiencequot Levyamp160explainedamp160 By focusing on viewer engagement of ads in a world of greater adfree options media companies could quotpresent consumers with an experience that was comparable to adfree but within an adsupported modelquot he addedA Changing AdSupported Television MarketAt Fox Levy took the same focus on engagement that he had at TrueX and quotbrought it to the business challenges at Foxquot where he worked in a Chief Operating Officer role foramp160Fox39s ad businessamp160 Challenges to the adsupported television model abound not least of which is quoton one side you have Netflix and Amazon subsidizing these adfree experiences which consumers enjoyquot and almost compelling adsupported television to reduce its ad time to compete and create better consumer experiencesamp160 quotOn the other hand you have Facebook and Google flooding the market with valueless impressions highly targetable but with low attentionquot he assertedamp160 It was important to prove that the quality of attention could impact ROIThe focus at Fox which later proved pivotal for his role at OpenAP was threefoldReaching the right consumers by finding better data to target more relevant advertising to themOnce the right consumer wasamp160identified developing ad products that best delivered those messages to the individual quotdepending on where they were and on which device where they were in the funnel who they werequotDeveloping measurement that not only measuredamp160the quality of the attention but also optimizedamp160the experiences down the funnelA Move to OpenAPquotIf you really want to evoke change doing something in silos is not conducive to successquot Levy saidamp160 quotThe only way you are going to transform the industry is doing it togetheramp160 So when we were approached by Viacom and WarnerMedia to form OpenAP the premise was closely aligned with our vision to find better ways to get more efficient with consumers39amp160time and attentionquotLevy quotfell in love with the visionquot and quotthe people around the tablequot from those competing companiesamp160 The purchase of Fox by Disney enabled himamp160to make the move to OpenAP and quotget back to his entrepreneurial rootsquot while still quotstaying connected to some of the exciting business challenges with people he had been working with for so longquotNext Steps for OpenAPquotThe best way to scale any new ad product or any new investment in bettering the advertising ecosystem is if we all do it togetherquot Levyamp160said To that end he is seeking quotadoption from everybodyquot to enable scale for any new marketplace developmentsamp160 OpenAP will be in a position to quotevaluate new ad products in datadriven linear and optimized linear addressable to unify around the way we buy advanced ad productsquotGoing forward Levy sees OpenAP moving from phase one which focused on unifying audience data on linear by individual company to phase two which standardizes segments across all OpenAP membersamp160 Phase two just recently announced will go from unified audiences to unified campaigns so that for example auto intenders for Viacom will have the same behavioral composition as auto intenders for Foxamp160 quotWe are introducing a tool for OpenAP with which advertisers can come in define the audience segment that they want it will be standard across everybody put in campaign requirements and get back a unified campaign proposal across all of the member publishersquot he explainedOpenAP is also launching a digital marketplace that goes furtheramp160 quotYou can define your audience segments and not just get back a unified proposal but also optimize across all of the publishers for reach and audience segmentquot Levy saidamp160amp160Beyond that he is thinking about how to accelerate the missionamp160 quotThere are so many opportunities with a unified approach with ad products with measurement and with one of the biggest opportunities building out a much more sophisticated data infrastructure that can be leveraged across all of the publishersquot he notedamp160 quotThis will ultimately bring an automated marketplace that is crosspublisher crossdevice togetherquotamp160 But he hastened to add this effort will focus solely on premium inventory in the market Longform television adsupported content resulting in less waste more ROI and greater viewer engagementClick the social buttons above or below to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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OpenAP CEO David Levy Is Engaging Consumers with Compelling Advertising

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Charlene Weisler

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OpenAP CEO David Levy Is Engaging Consumers with Compelling Advertising

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Charlene Weisler

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