By Erika Loberg, Senior Director, Advanced TV at OpenX
The booming growth in connected TV (CTV) has provided buyers with streamlined and easy access to premium content while also introducing new challenges, primarily around taxonomy fragmentation.
In CTV, publishers, buyers and demand-side platforms (DSPs) rely on disparate taxonomies. Content metadata—such as genre, language and content rating—is passed in millions of different variations. As a result, this valuable information often goes underutilized because it’s difficult for buyers to interpret and apply effectively for reporting and targeting.
Consider the romantic comedy. Depending on the publisher or platform, this genre can be self-reported in vastly different ways. Some publishers might categorize them under “romance” or “comedy,” while others might add a space between “rom com” or create a niche tag like “feel-good romcom” or “quirky love stories.”
This disjointed approach can make targeting and reporting a complex and often tedious endeavor. Fortunately, given where supply-side platforms (SSPs) sit, they have a very real opportunity to bring greater usability and transparency to this growing biddable environment, and it starts by standardizing these very important signals.
The importance of content signals
Despite the ongoing shift from linear TV to CTV, buyers still lack consistent, clear visibility into what they’re purchasing. In fact, two-thirds of marketers cite a lack of content-level transparency as a reason they aren’t transacting more on CTV.
Content signals can play a pivotal role in building this trust. As previously mentioned, these data points describe the characteristics of digital content, such as genre, language, maturity rating, and more, which help advertisers control where their ads are running in streaming environments.
SSPs that are directly integrated into CTV publishers benefit from a complete, unfiltered view of all the inventory and every signal being passed. This position enables SSPs to see all variations of content data and standardize them into categories that can be used for supply-side curation for buyers and passed to DSPs for reporting.
In the absence of industry-wide standardization, OpenX analyzed the taxonomies and bidding behaviors of DSPs, arriving at a set of genres and subgenres that would look familiar to DSPs and their buyers. The result is a scalable, easy-to-use framework that normalizes diverse signals in a way that’s intuitive to DSPs and has resulted in a 7x increase in bid rate when a standardized content-object signal is present.
The role of standardization in curation
Outside of a few standardized fields like genre and rating, not all signals are passed, leaving buyers with limited visibility into the content they’re running alongside and restricting their ability to refine targeting. Additionally, some publishers retain exclusive content object data for direct IOs, and privacy regulations, such as the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), prevent certain sensitive data—like show-level content—from being widely shared.
These constraints hinder the scale and targeting precision that advertisers seek from their CTV buys.
Innovative SSPs are stepping in to address these issues by creating standardized taxonomies and signal controls through curation. For example, OpenX recently streamlined millions of genre variations from its supply partners into nine categories and 132 distinct subcategories. This initiative has provided buyers more scalable, consistent content targeting across deals, simplifying both bidding and reporting.
This strategy, which is a type of data-driven curation, is a step toward creating interoperable taxonomies. In doing so, we have seen increases both in bid rates and campaign performance, allowing for smoother DSP targeting across open-market ad requests.
Privacy and pricing controls
Publishers are understandably cautious about sharing content signals widely, as granular data can be high-value assets or sensitive due to privacy concerns. To promote transparency while safeguarding their interests, content owners should partner with SSPs that have introduced advanced control tools, enabling publishers to manage the availability of content signals more effectively.
OpenX’s recently launched Publisher Signal Controls, for example, allow publishers to decide which content signals can be included in deals or excluded from DSPs. These enhanced controls foster greater confidence on the sell side by giving publishers the ability to manage what gets shared, and with whom.
It’s worth noting that privacy and pricing controls are not just about safeguarding data — they are also a tool for publishers to assert the value of their inventory. Transparent inventory with richer content signals (such as genre, rating, or channel/network information) offers buyers deeper insights and should, as a result, command a higher price. Publishers have the ability to strategically share these signals with the buy side, enabling premium pricing for impressions with enhanced visibility.
Conversely, buyers seeking more efficient CPMs may opt for obfuscated signals. While this reduces transparency, it allows publishers to meet those demands without compromising their control. This dynamic underscores the importance of robust tools like OpenX’s Publisher Signal Controls, which empower publishers to better navigate these trade-offs, ensuring a balanced and equitable programmatic ecosystem.
A unified taxonomy for CTV
As the industry navigates CTV’s rapid growth, it is crucial to establish standardized taxonomies for content signals to reduce fragmentation, facilitate scalable targeting, and enable actionable reporting.
By using data-driven curation tools, SSPs like OpenX can normalize disparate data, providing the foundation for unified taxonomies that improve targeting precision and campaign performance across platforms. Standardizing signal controls benefits all stakeholders — enabling publishers to better monetize their supply, buyers to purchase with transparency and confidence, and DSPs to bid more effectively in CTV.
