Vizio Announces Certifications for Ad Tech Companies Meeting OAR Standard

Vizio certified LTN, Beachfront, FreeWheel, Invidi, Google, Adcuratio and Extreme Reach for meeting technology specifications of the Open Addressable Ready (OAR) standard and successfully enabling addressable campaigns, said the TV maker Thursday. Vizio surpassed 11.2 million U.S. addressable TVs (see 2106090024) last month and successfully launched live addressable TV ad campaigns with top TV networks, it said.

“Addressable advertising is going to play an important role in the future of TV advertising, and we are working to ensure scale, standards and technology to power this future,” said Vizio Chief Innovation Officer Zeev Neumeier, steering community tech lead for Project OAR. The partner certifications expand the OAR ecosystem, allowing platforms and participants to use their preferred tech stacks or existing solutions, Neumeier said. The OAR standard helps optimize ad inventory and use unsold and underperforming inventory, while enabling advertisers to target different demographics and specific regions with localized content, Vizio said.

OAR members include AMC Networks, Comcast NBCUniversal, Discovery Networks, Disney, E.W. Scripps, Fox, Hearst Television, Univision, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia. Vizio is the lone TV company. OAR certification indicates vendors have “proven their commitment to driving addressable TV forward” by working with Vizio on watermarking and decisioning technologies, it said. OAR-certified partners have completed testing with several executing addressable campaigns across Vizio TVs.

LTN Global’s metadata signaling services are compatible with every partner in the advertising ecosystem, and its workflow automations support single- and multiple advertiser spot optimization, programmatic advertising and traditional competitive separation agreements, it said.

Beachfront completed a national campaign across 125 broadcast designated market areas (DMAs) and more than 3 million Vizio TVs, using its Unified Decisioning product for ad decisioning, said the company. Inventory included locally and nationally syndicated broadcast programming.

FreeWheel’s trials of live national addressable TV ad campaigns reached more than 3 million Vizio TVs and will expand to more during the year, said the company. Its underlying technology layer allows programmers to deliver scalable, integrated, addressable campaigns across digital video and linear addressable TV advertising via smart TVs.

Invidi ad technology reaches millions of Vizio smart TVs, along with the footprints of DirecTV, Dish and Verizon set-top boxes for WarnerMedia networks that are OAR-enabled, said Invidi CEO Bruce Anderson. The company is looking to support additional networks.

Google received Project OAR certification for Google Ad Manager video and advanced TV solutions enabling programmer partners to deliver addressable ads on Vizio SmartCast TVs.

Adcuratio Media and its partners ViacomCBS and Fox delivered national addressable advertiser campaigns across broadcast and cable networks in 200 DMAs, including the first execution during live sports, it said.

Extreme Reach integrated OAR watermark encoding into media processing on its AdBridge platform, it said. The company successfully conducted tests of ad replacement within syndicated programming, performing both the encoding and serving of replacement ads, it said.

Certification also allows technology partners to work more closely with OAR steering committee members including Disney’s Media Networks, WarnerMedia, Comcast NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, Discovery, Hearst Television, AMC Networks, Fox, Scripps and Univision. It also allows for working with agency advisory committee members Publicis Media, Omnicom Media, GroupM, IPG/Magna, Dentsu Aegis Network, Havas, Horizon Media and RPA, Vizio said.