TV measurement currency

PayPal announced plans to acquire Cymbio, a startup that helps brands improve their presence in AI searches. Plus: Hollywood seems to have forgotten how to do good movie marketing.

The alternative currency bucket could use a rebrand. That referential and somewhat deferential phraseology – a reference to Nielsen – drives Peter Liguori, VideoAmp’s executive chairman, a little nuts. It stems, he argues, from the “absurd notion” that the TV industry “has almost 100% of its eggs in one basket.”

Paramount and Omnicom Media Group unveil a pilot test transacting on VideoAmp using the data activation platform Mediaocean to automate linear TV buys based on something other than traditional demos.

Paramount released an initial template for TV publishers and advertisers with guidance on how to use new video currencies.

TV advertising is in the middle of a tectonic shift. GRPs are out, and impressions are on their way in. But plenty of advertisers still want to buy local and national spots based on region. And for small, local marketers accustomed to the relative simplicity of linear TV ad buying, the lack of standards in over-the-top (OTT) ad measurement is becoming a real pain in the tush.

To help solve TV measurement, NBCUniversal launched a “Currency Council,” a list of marketers who have committed to using alternate measurement currencies for at least a portion of their ad spend with NBCU. The program currently has about a dozen buy-side partners, including State Farm, Wayfair and T-Mobile.

It’s almost impossible for advertisers to know who’s really sitting in front of a TV screen, and they typically aren’t told what content their ads are running against, either. TV measurement companies are turning back to panels for help. Panel-based measurement provider TVision announced a $16 million venture round led by alternative TV measurement provider iSpot.

As long as major live sports airs on broadcast and cable, linear will stay relevant to consumers and thus to advertisers. But the sports industry is now also looking to participate in high-growth areas, including streaming video and connected TV. And major streaming-first platforms are giving broadcast a run for its money, writes Scott Sottile, chief revenue officer at Unruly.

Samba announced its merge with the St. Louis-based AI startup Disruptel to bolster its machine learning chops, namely in automatic content recognition (ACR). Samba plans to incorporate Disruptel’s tech, which is built on show-level content identification and analysis, into its ACR-based measurement.

To plan, target and measure media buys on TV, advertisers need to resolve identity at the household level, which calls for full media transparency, said Kelly Metz, managing director of linear and advanced TV activation at Omnicom Media Group. Kelly Metz will be speaking about the future of TV measurement at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference on October 17-18 in New York City. Click here to register.

VideoAmp released a tool that allows publishers and advertisers to compare audience viewership second by second throughout the duration of a program. The purpose is to help buyers target their ads more effectively. Advertisers have been demanding discrete program insights for targeting and measurement planning, Jonathan Bohm, VP of product at VideoAmp, tells AdExchanger.

Streaming is attracting more and more of TV ad spend. And yet, measurement still hasn’t caught up. But traditional panel-based measurement is far from the only culprit – issues with ad fraud, viewability and audience identification are more prevalent on streaming. That’s why TV measurement needs to be a fusion solution, says Jon Watts, managing director of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM).

The growth of connected TV advertising isn’t simmering down anytime soon – but the lack of an industrywide standard for campaign measurement is making it a rocky road. Several executives at AdMonsters’ Ops conference in New York City discussed how interoperability between TV publishers can help solve for some of the standstills stemming from the lack of consensus.

Historically, the technology used to deliver TV programming and advertising to viewers has evolved much faster than the ability to measure it. Now that ads don’t travel with their programming the way they did in the old days of legacy linear, the key to efficiency in cross-platform TV advertising will be measuring ads and content separately, writes Vijoy Gopalakrishnan, Chief Research Officer at iSpot.

TV is not dead, nor is it dying. It is in an evolutionary state. But for CTV and linear to remain relevant and co-exist, measurement needs to evolve, just like the TV product. And we should be applying the same audience-first approach to measuring impact across linear and CTV with one, equivalized currency for both, writes Michele Madaris, media director at Boathouse.

On Wednesday, iSpot.tv announced a $325 million investment from Goldman Sachs – a hefty chunk of change considering the company had previously raised a total of $58 million since it was founded in 2012. The company has a roadmap to enhance its TV measurement currency offerings (as well as attribution capabilities) with the new influx of funding.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Shape Up Or Shop Out Parallel news items reinforce the massive relative advantage for Amazon and its ad business compared with Facebook and Shopify in the wake of Apple’s data privacy overhaul. For years, rumors flew that Facebook was angling to acquire Shopify, The […]

On Tuesday, VideoAmp announced its acquisition of Elsy, an analytics platform founded in 2015 that helps advertisers optimize their media investments tied to business outcomes. The idea is to address VideoAmp clients’ biggest campaign planning hurdles: Automation and forecasting business outcomes.

Nielsen announced it’s selling itself to a private equity group for $16 billion. The future might be iffy for Nielsen, but it’s much more certain for the rest of the industry. Industry experts say a buyout of this size is a “boost of momentum” toward a multicurrency future that offers TV marketers the speed and transparency they’re looking for across platforms.