That’s where Sean Muller comes in.

The founder and CEO of iSpot.tv, a TV measurement provider, this week announced an upgrade to a solution he already had in-market.

Currency alignment

The announcement means iSpot.tv is adding precise and flexible demographic data in to its existing Unified Measurement platform, meaning brands can use person-level cross-screen ad measurement in real-time and analyze the impact of both CTV and linear impressions on business outcomes within 24 hours.

“That aligns with how media is bought today on both linear and actually, streaming,” Muller says n this video interview with Beet.TV.

“Almost all linear deals are done based on age and gender, and most streaming deals are also done based on age and gender. This allows advertisers to align the measurement with how media is bought and sold.”

Getting personal

“Today, we support roughly 300 streaming platforms and DSPs, and the solution has gotten great traction in the marketplace over the last couple of years,” Muller says.

“Today marks the addition of getting down to a person level within the iSpot real-time measurement.”

Unified Measurement builds on iSpot.tv’s existing ad catalogue and airing TV, which maps smart TV exposures to specific ad creatives and transmissions to provide granular streaming measurement.

Advertisers ask questions

iSpot.TV, which offers measurement, attribution and technical services, takes viewing data including from Inscape, the subsidiary of TV maker Vizio that uses automated content recognition (ACR) to capture audiences’ real viewing behavior – in all, across more than 16 million viewing devices.

Muller says advertisers need to understand two crucial elements when it comes to shifting money from linear TV to streaming ads:

• Incremental reach over and above linear TV.
• The ROI or business outcome from that advertising.

So Unified Measurement allows them to verify, optimize and plan cross-screen ad delivery against age and gender currency targets in real-time and connect exposures to business outcomes.

The race to unified measurement

Not to be outdone by @Nielsen, @ispottv adds demographics to its unified cross-platform measurement system. The TV measurement world heats up. https://t.co/QdrxlZWdFv pic.twitter.com/G3YNAQSrl4

— Jon Lafayette (@jlafayette) December 9, 2020

Nielsen’s announcement for what it calls Nielsen ONE could significantly move the industry toward its frequent demand for unified measurement.

But, with full completion due in 2023, iSpot.tv’s Muller thinks there is plenty of need for a solution today.

“I think the announcement from Nielsen continues to validate the need in the industry for several things – independent measurement that’s trusted by the industry and consistency across linear and streaming and personal level measurement,” he says.

“The Nielsen announcement is a great validation point that this is a need in the industry. Our capability is available now, starting next week, whereas Nielsen’s is going to be available a few years down the road.

“We see us and Nielsen as innovators in the space that are continuing to push the industry forward. I think it’s an exciting week for the industry.”

The complicated bit? Measuring your campaign holistically, when every platform is like an island.

In this recorded interview session, Robert Bareuther, SVP of business development at iSpot.tv, says advertisers are asking for unification.

“They’re all saying how hard it is to measure it,” he said.

“Measurements come up multiple times. And my sense is that everybody thinks we need better single source measurement covering TV/OTT/streaming services on connected televisions and other devices.”

iSpot.TV, which offers measurement, attribution and technical services, takes viewing data from Inscape, the subsidiary of TV maker Vizio that uses automated content recognition (ACR) to capture audiences’ real viewing behavior.

“We built a company over seven years that in real time syndicated, basis tracks all national ads for all brands, shows, dayparts, network spend, et cetera,” Bareuther added, “to have this baseline of ad buying, and then measure business outcomes, measure various KPIs.”

On March 18, iSpot.tv holds its “Pre-fronts“, an event at which brands, agencies, publishers and tech platforms will discuss the future of data-driven TV measurement.

The session was led by Beet.TV editorial and strategy director Jon Watts.

This video was produced  at the Beet Retreat San Juan 2020 sponsored by 605, DISH Media, NBCU, Roundel & Tubi.  For more videos from the series, please visit this landing page. 

That is according to the engineering and product chief at a company offering such services.

In this video interview, Anthony Skinner of iSpot.TV – which offers measurement, attribution and technical services – explains his company takes viewing data from Inscape, the subsidiary of TV maker Vizio that uses automated content recognition (ACR) to capture audiences’ real viewing behavior.

“It allows us to look at minute by minute viewing, really second by second viewing behaviour of TVs, smart TVs,” Skinner says.

“From that, we’re able to plough our metrics to it, lift frequency and others – TV adware, and so we’re able to then put that together as a package and then deliver it out to our customers.

“Most of the people that come to us are looking at getting TV ad spend that is based upon their KPIs – return on ad spend.”

iSpot.TV has been working with Roundel, Target’s data platform, for the last 18 months  to build an attribution platform that allows brands to match ad exposures to SKU level sales.

iSpot.tv will be the Beet.TV partner at next week’s ANA Masters of Marketing conference.

This video is part of a series of interviews conducted during Advertising Week New York, 2019.  This series is co-production of Beet.TV and Advertising Week.   The series is sponsored by Roundel, a Target company.  Please see more videos from Advertising Week right here. 

“So we see the advertisers as actually driving the marketplace forward on bringing business outcome type of thinking to the television world,” Muller adds in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent LUMA Partners Digital Media East conference.

It’s symptomatic of a shift from digital media to TV regarding accountability, according to Muller. “But television is difficult. It’s extremely hard to measure television” given its various iterations—linear, time-shifted, on-demand and syndicated. “It’s very, very, very complex.”

iSpot.tv has spent the last seven years “reinventing measurement for TV,” starting with the ability to do it in real time and at scale and then adding the capability to connect ad exposures to business outcomes. In other words, “using how television is bought without sort of reinventing how television is bought. Because that’s hard to change.”

The company’s proprietary ad catalog automatically tracks every TV ad on more than 120 networks and layers on meta data, according to Muller. “We then track airing schedules for every single TV ad so we know when every program and every ad airs.”

Four years ago, iSpot.tv added smart-TV data to the mix “so we’re actually the first company to commercialize smart TV data in a major way.” When all of the data are combined with U.S. Census demographics and geography data, the result is “a fully processed and cleansed and accurate TV side.”

Almost all (85%) of the company’s revenue is brand-direct, with the remainder coming from TV networks.

“We have 200 large advertiser clients that use the platform “to really bring their TV strategy in house, have transparency and then use us for everything from competitive measurement to attention to attribution and lift measurement,” Muller says.

“What I will say though is that advertisers are much further ahead in the marketplace in attribution than the media companies and even the ad agencies.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of LUMA Partners’ DIGITAL MEDIA EAST 2019. For more videos from the conference, please visit this page. This series is sponsored by 4INFO.

A consensus also emerged during the session that ultimately, one or more companies will figure out how to compensate consumers for their data beyond simply dispensing coupons and swag, perhaps one of the major credit card providers.

The panel was moderated by consultant Howard Shimmel, most recently of Turner Broadcasting, who at the outset mentioned the Starwood data breach because it was in the headlines that very morning. He asked whether despite the availability of great content and technology, “immense demand and an appetite to scale,” there will be enough data available given new legislation like GDPR in the European Union and CCPA in California.

Jodie McAfee of Inscape, a subsidiary of smart-TV manufacturer VIZIO, related the “classic case of no good deed goes unpunished” that occurred in 2015. VIZIO had just pushed to TV owners notification of how it collects household viewing data and where the data ends up. One of those owners was a reporter for Pro Publica who wrote a mostly “inaccurate” story about how TV’s can spy on them, according to McAfee.

“Two class action lawyers saw the article, found two plaintiffs and sued us and the rest was a complete mess,” said McAfee.

Among the more interesting learnings from the whole episode, the Federal Trade Commission thought that the language explaining what VIZIO does with owners’ viewing data was too buried. It should be “separate and prominent” from the TV setup process, which is what VIZIO ended up doing.

“Unless and until the consumer clicks ‘I accept,’ data collection is default off on our TV’s, so it is a full, true opt-in regime,” said McAfee.

Another relevant learning was the FTC’s view of the so-called value exchange that most advertising and media companies believe underpins the collection of consumer data. The government said “everybody needs to stop promising this idea that when the consumer opts in they’re going to get these bells and whistles around greater search and recommendation or whatever. Just knock it off. That’s not necessary and it’s kind of bullshit. Just tell them what you’re doing,” McAfee said.

The architects of GDPR hold the same view, according to McAfee. “It’s in GDPR. Don’t promise anything special. Just be clear about what you’re doing. That’s all anybody cares about.”

With an opt-in rate of 90% in the United States, “What we’ve learned is if you’re front and center with it and you are completely transparent about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, pretty much everybody, at least in the United States, they’ll opt in and they’re fine with it,” McAfee added.

Robert Bareuther of analytics and measurement firm iSpot.tv said the company gets “a tremendous amount of raw data from our valued partner VIZIO and we take that raw data and we decipher it into how households view content” and then measure business outcomes for advertisers. “We never see any private data, but it’s very important to us that rules are followed and you don’t breach anything. I think VIZIO’s done a spectacular job of making sure that everything’s on the up and up,” said Bareuther.

Nielsen Catalina’s Matt O’Grady said his company doesn’t touch any personally identifiable information about consumers, “but our applications for measurement and targeting are highly dependent upon PII. I’m dependent upon everybody in the ecosystem not violation or for lack of a better expression not screwing up.”

As for the impact of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica misadventure, “that made our liability statements and our onboarding much more difficult than it had ever been before,” said O’Grady.

Asked by Shimmel whether CPPA in California will end up looking like GDPR, O’Grady said the initiative is “a very healthy democracy in the sense that the pendulum can swing and people can really get a chance to voice their concerns. But I think a good substantial part of that opt-in is going to be re-written” before the law takes effect in January of 2020.

So will marketers ever end up having to actually pay consumers directly for their data, along with letting them control their data? “If I was involved in that, I don’t want a coupon,” said O’Grady. “I want true compensation for that. Somebody’s going to come along and figure out how to crack this nut. I don’t know if it’s going to be five years or twenty years from now, but I really do believe that we’re heading in that direction and there’s an enormous opportunity for somebody to come up with the vault concept.”

This video was produced in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the Beet.TV executive retreat. Please find more videos from the series on this page. The Beet Retreat was presented by NCC along with Amobee, Dish Media, Oath and Google.

“It’s like de facto. And that’s pretty cool. Maybe iSpot should get our crown pretty soon, because we’re rapidly becoming a really trusted third-party analytics provider for TV advertising,” the SVP, Business Development, says in this interview.

iSpot.tv started as a measurement company that could track TV ads in real time, according to Bareuther. “We built a syndicated product that measured TV ads and it became really popular for brands.”

About four years ago, the company started a partnership with smart TV manufacturer VIZIO to get access to ad impressions as they appear, based on automatic content recognition.

“So we’ve taken all this raw data from what’s appearing on screens second by second and do a lot of data work and data science around that,” Bareuther says.

There’s a range of information gleaned, including whether the ads are being seen live, via DVR or OTT, plus the pods and the shows in which the ads appeared. A typical analysis will include the number of airings of a spot, the estimated advertiser spend, the number of impressions, attention and engagement scores and percentage of share of voice.

The next step was being able to show what happened after viewers had seen the ads, as happens with much of digital advertising.

“Brands are spending so much money on TV and they’re spending so much money on digital and they know what’s happening in digital immediately. They get long feedback loops from TV,” Bareuther says.

iSpot.tv set out to shrink that feedback loop. “So we figured out a way to understand household consumption of television ads” so that advertisers could blend it into their marketing stacks, through LiveRamp, Adobe, Oracle et cetera. And help them understand themselves how it’s being effective.”

Asked whether any of its clients have enough outcomes data to be able to use it not just for back-end measurement but for planning purposes, Bareuther says yes.

“In order to get to the bottom of the funnel the first step is always to have the top of the funnel. Once we can say that this NBC show is more effective for you X retailer than this ABC show or this Bravo show or vice versa, maybe could use it to optimize your planning.”

This video was produced in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the Beet.TV executive retreat. Please find more videos from the series on this page. The Beet Retreat was presented by NCC along with Amobee, Dish Media, Oath and Google.

But that prospect is no longer just a possibility, it is a reality, and NBCUniversal just became one of the latest to undertake the practice.

It inked a deal with iSpot.tv, a real-time analytics company, has a panel of eight million from Vizio’s Inscape business unit, which uses automated content recognition (ACR) to figure out what viewers are really watching.

For iSpot.tv founder Sean Muller, it is part of a new era.

“We’ve been working with hundreds of brands in the marketplace to really move TV into the age of audience-based and business-based outcomes, and now we’re bringing it to the sales side,” he tells Beet.TV.

“(The partnership) allows any Audience Studio advertiser at NBC to have validation that the segments that NBC’s building from are, in fact, providing a lift in business outcomes.”

Traditionally, television has been seen as a top-of-funnel branding medium, but the increasing ability to track viewers from exposure to action and purchase may change that.

Several companies are trying to turn television in to a performance marketing channel.

“Really, what’s going to happen is the same segments that are being built in the digital world, they’re going to be planned and bought against in the TV world,” Muller adds.

This video was recorded at the annual DMS conference presented by LUMA Partners.

iSpot.tv tracks TV ads in real time as they air on TV and connects that to what consumers do on their devices in response to the ads, essentially measuring how paid media impacts earned media. In a recent 30-day period, iSpot.TV tracked 313 million interactions to TV ads across 44 million unique consumers. The interactions fell into three buckets, Fuller says. Consumers searched for something related to the ad to the tune of about 1 million searches a day. They also went online to look up and watch the ad, or they shared the ad on Facebook or Twitter. Brands can then overlay this data with the performance of the campaign to see how consumer reaction drives their ads and those of the competition, he says.