LAS VEGAS—As Xandr Media begins to cross-pollinate data and technology with Turner and other AT&T family entities, it wants the outside world to know that from a supply-side platform standpoint, its doors are open. “The welcome mat is out. It’s got neon lights around it,” says Xandr Media President Rick Welday.
Roughly four months after AT&T unveiled Xandr, the company announced in early January an integration with WarnerMedia’s Turner to improve the relevancy of advertising, fueled by data and content connections.
In this interview with Beet.TV at CES 2019, Welday talks about the new collaboration with Turner along with the high-level aspiration of Xander to make advertising more relevant while leveraging nearly 200 million consumer billing relationships that yield fertile data for both buyers and sellers.
And then there are viewers of premium video content, whose needs are a high priority. “Consumers should not have to tolerate sixteen minutes of un-targeted advertising for every hour of programming,” Welday says. “That’s a widely agreed upon problem. We think we can help with that.”
The Turner and Xandr ad sales teams have been working on the following four initiatives, with several enhanced products now available from Turner:
• More relevant advertising across Turner’s TV brands, with AT&T first-party set-top-box data
• Using Xandr’s data capabilities to fuel more relevant advertising on Turner’s digital properties
• Expanding the reach of branded storytelling to addressable TV
• Proving the impact of advertising through attribution
Elsewhere within the AT&T fold, Xander is using some of its audience targeting segment capabilities to inform both CNN digital and Bleacher Report across linear and digital. Meanwhile, it’s assisting the LaunchPad branded content solution extend into addressable. “So we can take the same audience they’re targeting with the branded content and find them on our addressable footprint,” Welday says.
Asked about Xandr’s desire to be a supply-side platform for competitors, Welday says it’s “very, very grateful” to be representing both Altice USA and Frontier Communications, with which it has agreements to aggregate and sell national addressable TV advertising inventory.
“Our intention is to build a marketplace where we can provide premium content in a brand-safe environment with visibility and transparency into how the campaign is being delivered across platforms. That by definition is open. We want all comers to be able to access that marketplace,” says Welday.
This video is part of Beet.TV coverage of CES 2019. The series is sponsored by NBCUniversal. For more coverage, please visit this page.
