Inscape Explains Project OAR

This Addressable series is brought to you by Project OAR, the consortium of media companies aligned to bring standards for addressable advertising in linear TV. Learn more about the consortium here.

As addressable TV advertising continues to grow, it requires standards that are agreed upon and applicable to the entire industry. With that in mind, enter Project OAR -- including members like Inscape, Vizio, AMC Networks, Discovery, Disney, Fox, Freewheel, Hearst, NBC Universal, ViacomCBS, WarnerMedia and Xandr -- arrived in 2019 to provide unified leadership in an emerging space.

But what is Project OAR? Greg Hampton is Vice President, Business Development at Inscape and was happy to dive into the consortium's purpose:

"I explain Project OAR just from an Inscape, or VIZIO, perspective, as just an open standard," said Hampton.

"We're really just enabling a capability on the glass that we control, which is the VIZIO televisions in market, to be able to replace an ad; a live linear ad. And that, in and of itself is super exciting. Knowing that -- delivering more relevant advertising to a consumer -- makes the ad pods more tolerable. I'm not being shown an ad that I'm just not in target for."

This idea is the key to addressable's upside for linear TV. Providing relevant, targeted advertising is essential to keep the attention of consumers, thus making ads more valuable both for them and the brands spending dollars to get them on the air.

As Hampton tells it, Project OAR is "just making the television viewing experience better, especially for those channels that are ad supported."

"I think the AVOD is not going anywhere. SVOD probably isn't either. But for those that want free television, the fact that you can actually get ads that are relevant to you or what somebody thinks are relevant to you is a better experience."