Snowflake Ventures Takes Stake in Ad-Tech Consortium Open AP

variety.com:

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor OpenAP was built by traditional TV companies hoping to get their collective hands around new ad-tech that is generating millions of advertising dollars Now they are reaching outside of their circle.

The advertising consortium, owned by NBCUniversal, Fox Corp., Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery, has enlisted an investment from Snowflake Ventures, a company that specializes in cloud-based data and analytics.

Snowflake will be the first company from outside the traditional TV business to have ownership in Open AP. “This investment from Snowflake is really a testament to the publishers saying, ‘We know this is where the industry is going,'” says David Levy, CEO of Open AP, in an interview.

Since launching in 2017 under the auspices of the former WarnerMedia’s Turner, the former Viacom Inc. and the Fox Networks Group of the former 21st Century Fox, Open AP has tried to facilitate the increasingly common practice of “audience buying” among advertisers.