With all the tools that businesses have at their disposal, the quest to find what works, what effective, remains unending. There's tons of data, but few solid solutions. That opens the door to new players offering answers through new products, new studies, new theories, as you'll see below. One thing that works is sports, in this case baseball. So play ball!

OpenAP Adds Stations, Streamers and Ad-Tech Partners to Audience-Based Ad Platform

‘OpenAP enables advertisers to activate data-driven strategies at scale,’ said CRO Ashley Luongo

OpenAP, formed to standardize audience-based TV advertising, says it now offers media buyers a pipeline to more inventory,

It also is working with additional ad-tech partners including Yahoo DSP, FreeWheel and PubMatic and is in the cinema advertising business with Screenvision.

Owned by some of the largest traditional media companies, OpenAP aims to help the fragmented television business compete with the digital advertising giants with a combination of cross-publisher activation, measurement and optimization, identity resolution and access to targeting data. [READ MORE]

Why Many Advertisers Are Disappointed With CTV

Connected TV (CTV)  was supposed to be an advertiser's dream. It promised the sight, sound and motion that powered the persuasiveness of linear TV with the targeting and accountability of digital advertising.

Advertisers have shifted a big share of their budgets to ad-supported CTV, but the growth in ad dollars hasn’t kept up with the growth in viewership. 

The industry has been looking for answers as the imbalance between high supply and lower-than-expected demand has led to low fill rates for available CTV inventory and depressed prices. 

A new report from Gracenote, Nielsen’s content data unit, puts forward a possible explanation. [READ MORE]

Interactive Ads Generate Engagement and Lift Sales Intent: Study

Interactive commercials that compel viewers to participate in activities like polls and trivia using their remote controls are more likely to generate brand recall, brand favorability and purchase intent, according to a new report from BrightLine.

The report is called The Engagement Effect: How Interactivity Predicts CTV Success. BrightLine, which bills itself as the industry leader in interactive CTV advertising, conducted the research behind the paper with MediaScience.

Interactive ads are designed to build viewer engagement, and as engagement rates increased, brand recall rose. The study found ads with the highest engagement rates averaged about 33% higher recall than those with the lowest score. [READ MORE]

Baseball Season Proved FanDuel Can Deliver Bigger Audiences, More Data About Fans

It’s possible that the biggest winner this baseball season wasn’t Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge or Cal Raleigh. 

It might be the former Bally regional sports networks, now bundled up as FanDuel Sports Network.

After emerging from bankruptcy and getting rebranded, FanDuel Sports Network reports that with just a handful of games remaining, it averaged a Total Audience Delivery of 1.5 million daily viewers across linear, out-of-market and streaming platforms, up a whopping 18% over the 2024 season. [READ MORE]

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