Not just targeting but also fine-grain measurement of the kind that TV advertisers never had before.

That is according to one tech executive who helped a US supermarket chain use CTV to great effect.

Win-win for Winn-Dixie

In this video interview with Beet.TV, TVSquared president Jo Kinsella says her company recently helped southern supermarket operator Winn-Dixie and its media buying agency USIM deploy a campaign over Tubi, the ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) service.

“They actually didn’t believe that people were going to their website, they didn’t believe that there was going to be any website visitation at all,” Kinsella says.

“Initially, they weren’t actually interested in attribution, they were just interested in reach and frequency.”

But Kinsella says the results, which came after the team used TVSquared’s ADvantage XP to leverage a reach extension over and above linear TV and using frequency-cap reporting, were “amazing”:

• “We were able to show 79% net new households were reached by Tubi over and above what they’d reached in linear.”
• “What was staggering for the Winn-Dixie folk is that 54% of exposed audiences visited the grocer’s retailer site.”
• “Because we can see new visitors, we can see returning visitors, we can see them leaving stuff in the cart, we can see them coming back and converting… they were able to get really deep into the analysis in terms of what worked and what didn’t work.”

Spending forecast

For Kinsella, it’s yet another proof point. “It sends the message to the industry,” she says. “When you can prove that something’s working, marketers will spend more money.”

TVSquared helps brands learn how TV advertising is driving traffic to their websites.

One of the company’s two main software pieces is ADvantage, a platform providing offering insight in to how each TV impression drives revenue through online, mobile and second screen for advertisers looking for accurate same-day TV attribution.

The company’s Predict tool helps advertisers automate the creation of their buy specifications based on predictive analysis of historical attribution data that is optimized, whether the objective is to generate sales, registrations, web site visits or any other kind of response.

According to eMarketer, US CTV ad spending was due to total $8.11 billion in 2020, increasing to $11.36 billion in 2021. By 2024 it will reach $18.29 billion, more than double the amount spent this year.

The group expects about half of that to be programmatically traded.

That is still a small fraction of a US TV ad market worth almost $70 billion a year.

‘AVOD will win’

But Kinsella believes the advantages of connected TV will continue to become clear.

“The big thing for marketers right now – and this is where I see the CTV and the AVOD guys winning – is flexibility, transparency, and the ability to optimize,” she says.

“Because they came from a digital world, they’re very comfortable doing that, and they’re very comfortable having those types of conversations

“I think the AVOD platforms are leaning heavily in to measurement and attribution platforms because it’s a differentiator. They can prove that their stuff is working exponentially well over and above linear. They’re going to win.”

You are watching, “The Stream: New Audiences, New Opportunities,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Tubi. For more videos, please visit this page.

But too few brands are doing so, because vested interests and a lack of action stand in the way.

That is according to an industry executive who is urging the supply chain to speed up.

At Beet Retreat, TVSquared president Jo Kinsella: “People are talking, but they’re not taking action.

“We need to figure out a way to play nice, and simplify what the marketer wants.

“The marketer has to win. The platform providers have to win, and we have to do it in a privacy-compliant, secure way.”

TVSquared helps brands learn how TV advertising is driving traffic to their websites.

One of the company’s two main software pieces is ADvantage, a platform providing offering insight in to how each TV impression drives revenue through online, mobile and second screen for advertisers looking for accurate same-day TV attribution.

The company’s Predict tool helps advertisers automate the creation of their buy specifications based on predictive analysis of historical attribution data that is optimized, whether the objective is to generate sales, registrations, web site visits or any other kind of response.

“We did a study of 2019, a thousand advertisers using our attribution platform, (they) reduced their cost per response by 41%, and increased their TV spend by 91%,” Kinsella added.

“We come to these conferences and we stand up and we talk and we are all passionate about it, and then we leave and do fuck all. Just take the step. Just to do it. Just take the step. Just do it.”

Kinsella was interviewed by Beet.TV director of editorial and strategy Jon Watts at Beet Retreat San Juan 2020, where she was a participant.

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. 

Over the last year, we have seen several technology companies apply such technology even to linear TV broadcasters, using either automatic content recognition (ACR) that can “listen” to what audiences are really watching or using a traditional panel system.

Now TVSquared is launching a cross-platform, multi-touch attribution system for over-the-top (OTT) connected (TV), and is taking a different approach.

“For the OTT stuff, we wanted to go about it slightly differently,” says Jo Kinsella, TVSquared’s president.

“(Since October), we have added on probably 20 or so publishers. That’s different because we wanted to be able to capture 100% of every impression served on OTT and CTV, rather than just depending on a matched panel, which may be six to eight million. If you’re only capturing OTT … you are probably getting about 1% of the United States. We wanted to be able to tag at the ad server so we see every single impression that gets served.”

TVSquared helps brands learn how TV advertising is driving traffic to their websites.

One of the company’s two main software pieces is ADvantage, a platform providing offering insight in to how each TV impression drives revenue through online, mobile and second screen for advertisers looking for accurate same-day TV attribution.

The company’s Predict tool helps advertisers automate the creation of their buy specifications based on predictive analysis of historical attribution data that is optimized, whether the objective is to generate sales, registrations, web site visits or any other kind of response.

“Because we’ve already tagged the website of the advertiser, we can immediately tie that back to performance and see reach, frequency, performance, and full impression based attribution,” Kinsella adds.

Kinsella will be a speaker at Beet Retreat San Juan 2020, three days of high-level panels, group conversations, one-on-one video interviews, networking events and interactions.

Ampersand, the former NCC Media, has announced a partnership with TVSquared, a technology vendor whose attribution offering links ad exposure data with actual outcome data.

According to that announcement: “Advertisers can now track the influence of TV campaigns on lower-funnel activities, including website traffic and sales. Granular TV insights across different days, dayparts, networks and creatives are tracked in real-time by TVSquared, and leveraged to inform where changes can be made to achieve KPIs and improve performance across all TV investments.”

TVSquared helps brands learn how TV advertising is driving traffic to their websites.

One of the company’s two main software pieces is ADvantage, a platform providing offering insight in to how each TV impression drives revenue through online, mobile and second screen for advertisers looking for accurate same-day TV attribution.

The company’s Predict tool helps advertisers automate the creation of their buy specifications based on predictive analysis of historical attribution data that is optimized, whether the objective is to generate sales, registrations, web site visits or any other kind of response.

“Proof of performance is becoming increasingly important for the sell-side as it identifies ways to support the continued growth of TV investments,” said Jo Kinsella, EVP and CRO, TVSquared.

Operated by Comcast, Charter and Cox Communications, NCC Media launched in 1981 to provide a common way for ad buyers to get on to disparate and disconnected cable, satellite and now telco networks.

It recently rebranded itself to “Ampersand“, just one of a raft of announcements as it reinvents itself for a new age of TV.

Here, we are republising our interview with Kinsella from this past August’s Beet.TV leadership event at GroupM.  In the video, Kinsella explains the alliance with Comcast Spotlight.

In it, she said: “TV viewership has gone up and actually, we’re seeing media dollars come back to television because now we can prove that it’s working.”

But is full attribution really available today – or is it just a mirage?

In a spicy panel at Beet Retreat in the City, “We’re Going Local!”, a trio of executives disagreed on whether the relative absence of such strategies in the TV industry today is the fault of lack of technology – or lack of willingness:

• Bob Ivins, chief data officer, NCC Media
• Jo Kinsella, chief revenue officer, TVSquared
• Brian Wallach, chief revenue officer, FreeWheel

They were led by EY media and entertainment practice lead Janet Balis.

‘Stop being scared’

Kinsella of TVSquared’s, whose platform helps brands learn how TV advertising is driving traffic to their websites, took issue with sentiment expressed on an earlier panel – that measuring TV ads based on real outcomes, like sales, should not take precedence.

“That boggles my mind,” she said. “Why am I going to give you money if you can’t prove that it’s going to work? I’m not going to believe that bullshit. Currencies and GRPs? Just stop! We have the data, we have the technology – and people are getting in the way. It’s time to stop being scared. Use the data, use the tech, drive results. Simple.”

Outcomes are complex

Bob Ivins of NCC Media – the joint venture of Comcast, Cox and Charter – that is measuring set-top box viewing data – said measuring “outcomes” is not so simple.

“You’re measuring an outcome, one outcome – and there’s a bunch of different outcomes,” he explained. “An outcome could be to ‘go to a website’, an outcome could be ‘do a transaction’, an outcome could be ‘do a search’. There’s a bunch of different outcomes.

“Unless you have all those outcomes with the metric on them that you can monitor with real-time and at scale the way you are, then we’re just doing one at a time. And I think when you think attribution, it’s not one thing.”

Real-time measurement

Wallach of Comcast-owned FreeWheel said the new technology allows ad buyers to change how they buy inventory in the middle of a campaign – a vast change from previously.

“A year ago, it would be six months after a campaign was completed before you first look at a report,” he said. “(By then), everything has changed – consumer behaviour has changed, the product may have even changed or the sales channel, etc.”

Kinsella said being able to do that across TV devices required consolidating from multiple distinct software platforms to one that gives a holistic overview.

Is change hard?

But NCC Media’s Ivins replied: “There’s a long journey though, until we can do that executionally in linear TV.

“I mean, there’s a long, long road ahead of us. It’s hard. I think it’s (because of) technology, I think it’s people, I think it’s just the cable plan itself is hard to work with. There is legacy infrastructure on the agency side and the brand side and the technology side.”

But TVSquared’s Kinsella disagreed with the “no”: “Just say ‘yes’. (People say) ‘there’s still so much’, ‘no, it’s hard’, ‘we can’t do that, the systems are old, what about Nielsen? I can’t fire that many people’.

“Just say ‘yes!’. Just say ‘yes’. We are doing it today. It’s happening. It’s real.

This video is part of a series from the Beet Retreat in the City, “We’re Going Local!” hosted by GroupM Worldwide and sponsored by Amobee, Comcast Spotlight, TVSquared and WideOrbit. Please visit this page for additional segments.

That is according to an executive whose software company’s insights have been encouraging hundreds of advertisers to greatly increase their spending in the medium.

TVSquared helps power Instant Impact, an analytics platform at Comcast Cable’s Spotlight ad sales unit which shows the impact on web traffic from airing an ad on Comcast, within 30 minutes of transmission.

The relationship started with a proof-of-concept in three to five markets, followed with a pilot involving 25 advertisers and the full roll-out was announced this month. Comcast Spotlight has also said it intends to apply Instant Impact to more customer types outside of automotive.

Jo Kinsella, TVSquared chief revenue officer, spoke with Ashley J. Swartz, CEO, Furious Corp, in this recorded discussion at Beet Retreat in the City, “We’re Going Local!” in August.

TV is resurgent

“Television, to me, has the opportunity to thrive, not just survive now,” Swartz said.

“(In TV), we’re really not … losing money to digital,” Kinsella concurred. “We see (advertising) people coming back all the time. We have advertisers on the platform in 72 different countries right now, soon to be probably up at a hundred countries.”

She said one advertiser on the platform, which spent $1 million on TV three years ago, this year plans to spend $40 million.

Attribution unlocks value

The “game-changer” is attribution technology. Historically, TV has been viewed as a brand-building medium, at the top of marketing funnels; it has been difficult to prove how television commercials prompt actions like store visitation or, particularly, purchase.

That has caused many marketers to turn away from linear local TV, finding they can get results and proven effectiveness in digital channels.

“Now we can measure it and make it accountable,” Kinsella said. “We’ve seen advertisers double their spend, double their commitment, saying, ‘I’m not just going to advertise for three months, I’m not just going to do a Pulse campaign, I’m going to do an annual commitment, because now you’ve shown me that TV. is working’.”

An incremental comeback

Kinsella doesn’t expect the return of ad flow to local TV will happen overnight. Rather than place all their money on black, she imagines ad buyers making iterative changes, testing to discover exactly how TV can demonstrably fuel performance.

“When they’ve done that for a couple of months and they see that it’s driving more response, whatever the response might be, they say, ‘Oh, this is working, let’s keep doing it’. We have clients that have been optimizing now weekly, monthly… for three, four, five years.”

The future is measurable

Kinsella acknowledges that many in TV land are “terrified” of data-driven, automated TV ad sales. But she expects they will come around when all kinds of TV are made measurable.

“It just changes the whole TV ecosystem, if we can now measure everything, whether it’s a digital platform or a linear platform,” she says.

“It’s about serving up an analytics platform that allows our clients to choose their KPIs and to tie TV performance, whether it’s linear or digital, back to business outcomes. That’s the future.”

This video is part of a series from the Beet Retreat in the City, “We’re Going Local!” hosted by GroupM Worldwide and sponsored by Amobee, Comcast Spotlight, TVSquared and WideOrbit. Please visit this page for additional segments.

But the emergence of digital attribution technologies plugged in to local TV ad sales now promises to bring ad spending back to local TV operators.

That is according to one TV ad-tech platform which is watching an in-flux on money back to certain operators.

“We’ve seen (certain) automotive dealers double their spend (with) local TV),” says Jo Kinsella, TVSquared chief revenue officer, in this video interview with Beet.TV.

“And it’s not just about doubling spend. It’s also been about committing to much longer-term campaigns to the point where Comcast is saying (to advertisers), ‘You know what? Let’s sign up for a longer commitment because now you know it works’.”

Kinsella’s TVSquared helps power Instant Impact, an analytics platform at Comcast Cable’s Spotlight ad sales unit which shows the impact on web traffic from airing an ad on Comcast, within 30 minutes of transmission.

In this Beet.TV interview with Maryann Halford, senior advisor at MTM Consulting, Kinsella says the relationship started with a proof-of-concept in three to five markets, followed with a pilot involving 25 advertisers and the full roll-out announced this week.

Comcast Spotlight has also said it intends to apply Instant Impact to more customer types outside of automotive.

“TV viewership has gone up and actually, we’re seeing media dollars come back to television because now we can prove that it’s working,” Kinsella adds.

Local media is widely seen as offering untapped potential for targetability and, because it is often a patchwork of distinct designated market areas (DMAs), the ability to incrementally boost reach.

That potential is slowly being unlocked, as local TV operators plug in a new wave of software.

“They’re able tie (TV ad exposure) back to lower-funnel metrics,” Kinsella boasts. “But I think the easiest way to explain it is really proof of performance All of a sudden, in the same way that we’ve been able to measure digital all these years, we can now measure TV in the same way.”

This video is part of a series from the Beet Retreat in the City, “We’re Going Local!” hosted by GroupM Worldwide and sponsored by Amobee, Comcast Spotlight, TVSquared and WideOrbit.   Please visit this page for additional segments. 

That is according to one executive who is seeing advertisers double their TV ad spending as a result.

“For as long as we started this company, people have been talking about TV media dollars going away, declining,” says Jo Kinsella, TVSquared chief revenue officer, in this video interview with Beet.TV.

“Actually, what we’ve seen is, especially in local, where we’re really able to line up the local inventory, people are saying, ‘Wait. Now I can prove that this works. Now I can see that actually this inventory is driving engagement for my advertiser. I’m going to give these guys some more money’.”

The opportunity is opening up because cable operators are making more inventory addressable to advertisers – not just the two minutes per hour historically given over, but all of the available time – and because more of that advertising can be delivered direct to devices, rather than through the cable operators.

That lightbulb moment happens because of technology from the likes of TVSquared, which helps brands learn how TV advertising is driving traffic to their websites.

TVSquared research recently found that 50% to 70% of all performance outcomes for direct-to-consumer brands’ TV ads occurred on mobile devices.

“We’ve had car dealers that potentially only spend $20,000 a month now spending $40,000 a month, because they’ve been able to prove (effectiveness),” Kinsella adds. “They’re like, ‘Oh. Okay. Well, I’ll give you more money to spend’.”

This video is part of a series from the Beet Retreat in the City, “We’re Going Local!” hosted by GroupM Worldwide and sponsored by Amobee, Comcast Spotlight and TVSquared.   Please visit this page for additional segments. 

But, if you a rival of Data Plus Math, that eye-popping deal isn’t a threat, it’s to be welcomed.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jo Kinsella, TVSquared chief revenue officer, issues a message to Data Plus Math.

“We were actually really happy about that deal because it brings performance (advertising) to the forefront,” she says. “I think we feel like we’ve been talking about it for a long time. I’ve sat on a ton of panels and said, ‘This is the way the world is moving’. I think the acquisition of Data Plus Math really proves that that’s kind of what the industry wants and needs.”

Data Plus Math works when marketers add its “TV Pixel” to their websites or apps. The company links tracked in-app or on-web activity to ad exposure data from millions of US homes, effectively supporting attributing ad views to website or checkout conversion.

Kinsella’s own TVSquared helps brands learn how TV advertising is driving traffic to their websites.

One of the company’s two main software pieces is ADvantage, a platform providing offering insight in to how each TV impression drives revenue through online, mobile and second screen for advertisers looking for accurate same-day TV attribution.

The company’s Predict tool helps advertisers automate the creation of their buy specifications based on predictive analysis of historical attribution data that is optimized, whether the objective is to generate sales, registrations, web site visits or any other kind of response.

Kinsella thinks all performance’s boats are rising.

“Performance is hot because it’s all about return on (advertisers’) investment,” she says. “Tying performance back to business outcomes, I think the advertiser base is now demanding that. Finally, it feels like the industry is a turning point.

“This kind of pivotal direction that we’re now heading in, which is we want to be able to measure … we want to be able to optimize in the same way that we do (in) digital for TV, and that’s why we’re here.”

This video is from a Beet.TV series titled TV: Now an Outcome-Driven Medium. For more segments, please visit this page. This series is presented by TVSquared.

One of them is TVSquared, a company helping brands learn how TV advertising is driving traffic to their websites.

Whilst the ability to attribute website visitation back to TV ad exposure seems like something from the future, TVSquared is one of the suppliers enabling it today.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jo Kinsella, TVSquared chief revenue officer, says national brands don’t necessarily have a one-up in this regard.

“Local has really been one of our fastest growing areas in the last 12 months,” Kinsella says.

“From a local cable standpoint, the ability of inventory is significantly bigger, the spot count is bigger.

“Smaller advertisers don’t spend as much as they do on the national side but actually have the ability to flex spend, increase spend relatively quickly (and) also make changes to the media buy.”

So, what exactly can attribution from TV ads through to websites do for a brand?

Kinsella says the growing crop of direct-to-consumer brands is especially interested in the possibilities.

Despite often being digital-only, many such brands are spending heavily on TV exposure – but they nevertheless want to benefit from the kinds of measurement they have seen in digital.

“What they’re doing is, they’re making these changes and then they’re running another (campaign) flight and they’re seeing actual increases in sales or conversions or whatever their business KPI is,” Kinsella explains.

It all falls under the category of “teaching TV new tricks”.

Kinsella observes: “We’ve seen articles over the last couple of weeks that say, ‘Maybe we said TV was dead a little bit too early’. And certainly what we’re seeing is the way you can prove TV works people are actually moving money back into TV.

“We have clients that we’ve actually written about before that credit TVSquared insights with 30% increase in sales. We have clients that have come on with an initial TV strategy that have then ended up spending three times what they’d originally planned to.”

This video is from a Beet.TV series titled TV: Now an Outcome-Driven Medium. For more segments, please visit this page. This series is presented by TVSquared.

But that is only because, without access to return-path data, TV has never been able to boast the kinds of user attribution that new digital media do.

Now that TVs have got connected, however, all that is changing – and one ad-tech exec thinks this turns on its head the place of TV in the funnel.So,

“I think the big thing for us is to look at TV as a performance channel,” says Jo Kinsella, TVSquared chief revenue officer, in this video interview with Beet.TV.

TVSquared is a company helping brands learn how TV advertising is driving traffic to their websites.

But Kinsella doesn’t need a viewer to click from their TV to a website. TVSquared uses a range of other data to establish whether a viewer exposed to an ad took a follow-up action that led to a purchase.

“We get post logs … the time that the ad aired, and then we would typically deploy a pixel tracker to a website,” she says. “We will integrate with an app company to get app downloads or registrations. We take phone data. We take good old fashion SMS data. You name it, we’ve seen it all over the last six years.”

Kinsella credits “digital-thinking CMOs” that are now beginning to draw a line from linear TV to digital performance. Companies like Untuckit, Placed, Hello Fresh and Third Love are using the new capability, she says.

“You should be able to measure (TV) and optimize it,” Kinsella adds. “Linear wasn’t cool for a while, but actually people are realizing that it still has the quickest and easiest way to get reach and to get the name out there and to really drive sales or registrations, whatever the KPI is.”

Beet.TV recorded this interview at the Advanced Advertising Summit in New York City.