Dive Brief:
- Kantar Millward Brown and Samba TV announced the launch of what a joint press release described as a TV ad analytics platform that will be the largest and most precise single-source measurement solution for television advertising effectiveness.
- The platform combines Samba’s TV dataset which includes 13.5 million smart TV and connected device households with Kantar Millward Brown’s Ignite Network with 8 million PC users and 3 million mobile users. The combined user groups will create a single-source verified passive measurement of TV advertising, per the press release.
- For marketers, the platform will track exposure at a TV set level and link that to claimed exposure at the individual level and will help answer brand questions including: Which elements of the TV ad campaign are most successful? How does the campaign benchmark against the industry? How can optimizations be made in market to improve campaign effectiveness?
Dive Insight:
The deal points to a trend towards merging TV and digital measurements for greater clarity on viewing habits and ad effectiveness. With digital marketing, advertisers have become accustomed to having access to a wealth of specific data around campaigns, sometimes down to the individual level. That sort of audience specificity has not traditionally been something that TV would or could offer, but with recent technological advances, there has been a major push for cross-platform measurement that takes into account traditional marketing channels like TV. At the same time, TV ratings powerhouse Nielsen is looking to bolster its position by encompassing more viewing off TV with its Total Content Ratings, which launched last year.
In this environment, Kantar Millward Brown and Samba TV will need to differentiate its offering if it is to attract clients, something they hope to accomplish by promising a simple, single source for measuring effectiveness. One limitation in the new platform from Kantar Millward Brown and Samba TV is the TV element comes from smart TVs and connected devices and not all TVs. And while TV advertising isn’t going away – it’s a far too important part of the ad ecosystem – linear TV ratings continue to fall and cord-cutting continues apace.
TV has been making inroads into marketing tech that is more associated with digital channels, such as cable networks offering targeting options to specific audiences, and in April Google announced it was opening traditional TV inventory to programmatic buying via DoubleClick Bid Manager.
