The Digital Television Group (DTG) has named Virgin Media O2’s Devendra Mishra as chair of its new IP Advertising Group, a cross-industry forum set up to accelerate the rollout of interoperable, data-driven advertising across IP-delivered TV.
Mishra is Senior Manager of Advanced Advertising Technology at Virgin Media O2, where he leads strategy and delivery for advanced advertising products across broadcast and streaming. He has previously worked on Sky’s AdSmart and PromoSmart platforms and on BT’s deployment of targeted advertising in YouView.
The DTG said the IP Advertising Group will run for nine months and bring together stakeholders from across the advertising value chain to address what it describes as the core blockers to a scalable and “trusted” IP-first ad ecosystem for TV.
The work builds on the DTG’s recent report, IP Advertising: Aligning Tech, Experience and Value, and will focus on turning that thinking into an agreed reference approach that the market can adopt.
Mishra said IP-delivered advertising represented a chance to “combine the scale of broadcast with the precision of digital”, but warned that progress depends on collaboration around interoperability, transparency and sustainable value.
DTG CTO Alex Buchan said Mishra’s experience in deploying advanced ad technology at scale would be critical as the group works towards what the DTG wants to be a standards-based framework for the UK market.
The group will meet monthly in hybrid format and has identified five initial priority areas: measurement, interoperability, metadata standardisation, consent management and commercial model alignment.
Its planned outputs include common terminology, practical implementation guidance and a high-level reference framework to support coordinated rollout of addressable and targeted advertising across IP-delivered TV.
