Paramount and OMG Usher in Next Step in New Currency Workflow

Paramount and Omnicom Media Group are fast-tracking the next phase of new currency.

The companies have announced that this quarter they are piloting the first fully standardized new currency and audience-based workflow using Mediaocean’s ad infrastructure. The pilot leverages VideoAmp data as an advanced currency, with the teams agreeing on the workflow, identifiers and overall data management to make the test work within existing systems so there are minimal changes to standard practices.

“What it means is we can transact in the exact same way against new currencies—non-Nielsen-based currencies—as well as audiences, so not just age, gender or demo,” Travis Scoles, svp of advanced advertising of Paramount, told Adweek, adding, “What does this mean for a marketer? Well, it means that they have a lot more flexibility now in how they can, in the datasets and the companies that they can work with, deploy their strategy broadly.”

With Nielsen sunsetting the current industry standard, C3 and C7, in the fall of 2024, every currency on the market is set to be new, making seamless workflow even more critical.

Adweek previously reported that Mediaocean was already working to streamline workflows and provide marketers with a unified and standardized currency, and Ramsey McGrory, chief development officer of Mediaocean, said in a statement that the company is investing significantly to support the future of measurement, adding that it’s “happy to support OMG and Paramount in making this a scalable reality.”

For Geoffrey Calabrese, chief investment officer of Omnicom Media Group North America, “validating the key operational pieces within Mediaocean to be transaction ready on new currencies, including custom audiences at scale,” was critical to the pilot process.

“The Paramount team worked diligently on behalf of the entire industry to test and enable an end-to-end workflow with Mediaocean, and it has proven successful,” Calabrese said. “Leveraging this outstanding work across partners and ingesting it into the unique workflows we have with them is the next step in this journey, and we’re eager to lean in on it.”

The overall goal of Paramount and OMG’s pilot partnership is to make the systems and automation that already existed for Nielsen’s age, gender and demo measurement also work for new currencies and audiences. And “so far, so good,” according to Scoles.

“We’re doing this pilot this quarter to essentially make sure that everything’s working as expected. We’ve connected all the pipes, and now we’re running water through it to see if there’s any leaks,” Scoles said.

Where it goes from here

Paramount has already been transacting on VideoAmp-based guarantees, but this project was about critical end-to-end workflow. And Ross McCray, founder and CEO of VideoAmp, noted that the company was excited to bring “seamless, interoperability” to the buy and sell side through Mediaocean.

“We want to ensure that making the transition to new, advanced currencies like VideoAmp is as easy and efficient for clients as possible,” McCray said. “This is a huge step forward for all parties and we look forward to the future of currency as we see accelerated adoption of our offering.”

And though the pilot is under a Paramount and OMG partnership, Scoles explained that this is a major step for the whole industry, with Mediaocean configuring its infrastructure to handle big data and bring in big currencies.

“I would expect this is a massive leap forward for all new currencies, and that includes the upcoming Nielsen One,” Scoles said.

The exec also emphasized the importance of advertisers now having the opportunity to utilize audience-based, first-party data at scale.

“That’s the dream of database advertising. And we are substantially closer to that because of this innovation,” Scoles added.