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. 

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.