As out-of-home advertising continues to embrace new digital capabilities, the sector’s trade body, Outsmart, and the IPA’s outdoor specialists have announced the publication of a programmatic direct trading standard.
OpenDirect (OOH) builds on the IAB Tech Lab’s OpenDirect structure, with an extension for media owners and buyers to connect and transact inventory in an OpenDirect-compliant interface.
For media owners, this means that they can make guaranteed inventory available in a programmatic marketplace. For buyers, this means they can programmatically access inventory for their customers.
For the wider industry, a marketplace that uses OpenDirect means a more “fluid movement” of inventory and increased opportunity to overlay data to inform purchase and sale decisions and purchase directly.
A broad range of OOH media owners have been involved, including ClearChannel, Global, JCDecaux, Ocean Outdoor and the agencies Kinetic, Posterscope, Rapport and Talon.
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Commenting on the publication, Outsmart chair Justin Cochrane said it was an “example of best-in-class collaboration” that he expects to grow as more brands use programmatic OOH.
OpenDirect (OOH) 1.5.1 focuses on a ‘product targeting’ function to accommodate the ‘real world’ aspects of out-of-home media in the dimensions of inventory, audience, delivery, distribution, pricing and prohibitions.
It is also designed to support the programmatic trading of both ‘classic’ and ‘digital’ out-of-home media formats from billboards to vehicles to digital screen displays.
Amit Shetty, senior director at IAB Tech Lab, said: “OpenDirect provides a standard way for publishers to make their inventory available in any OpenDirect-compliant interface, which helps agencies and advertisers access premium inventory.
“The out-of-home collaboration to add channel-specific capabilities as an extension enables the global media industry to learn from the adoption of this project, refine as needed, and ideally merge the extension into the next version of OpenDirect.”
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