Hello, readers! If the nonstop news coming out of Cannes Lions in France this week is making your head spin, this week’s newsletter dispatch will catch you up on how CTV is factoring into this year’s festival.
Media and ad tech companies flock to Cannes to flaunt partnerships and new products in hopes of inking bigger and better business deals. This year, the biggest streaming themes were – surprise, surprise – video ad currencies and outcomes-based measurement.
Although companies often time press releases for Cannes, their announcements align with overarching trends in ad tech. There is still strife between video currencies, for instance, while recent ad tech acquisitions are fueled by a desire to suffuse streaming with data, attribution and measurement.
Let’s dive in.
Currents of currency
From the shores of Cannes, Nielsen competitor Comscore ballyhooed a new integration with Kochava this week. Now, Comscore says it will be able to produce outcomes measurement based on web traffic, app downloads and in-app purchases, layered with Kochava’s location and consumer traffic analytics.
The idea is to attract business from among the growing number of advertisers that treat streaming media more like a digital performance channel than traditional television.
Cannes is a fortuitous time for measurement product announcements because currency providers are actively competing for business wherever they can while major upfront ad buying negotiations are in full swing.
Yahoo’s DSP, for example, announced new CTV measurement integrations last week with Comscore, VideoAmp and iSpot. Yahoo will complete these integrations by the fall – when upfront spend commitments take effect.
Until then, Nielsen’s top three rivals must compete for as big a share as possible of the TV and video ad budgets earmarked for the next broadcast year.
Nielsen, meanwhile, is trying to maintain its incumbent status with its own data and measurement upgrades.
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Ahead of Cannes, Nielsen unveiled a new integration with LiveRamp to make it easier for clients to use both first- and third-party data for audience plans within Nielsen One, its cross-platform measurement dashboard.
Outcomes or it didn’t happen
Beyond video ad currencies, streaming publishers and ad tech companies are zeroing in on outcomes-based measurement.
Also in Cannes this week, Disney announced a new partnership with retail data provider Affinity Solutions, which collects sales and purchase data from banks and credit companies. Using Disney’s clean room tech, brands and buyers can use Affinity’s purchase data to plan and measure campaigns across Disney inventory.
And it isn’t just entertainment giants like Disney with plans to put more attribution data to work in streaming.
Last week, for example, the DSP Madhive acquired the omnichannel marketing platform Frequence. For Madhive, the goal is to create more opportunities to retarget streaming viewers on other channels. Since TV ads don’t drive direct clicks, retargeting is a popular tactic for applying performance marketing to CTV.
And Madhive isn’t the only programmatic platform buying up tools for video and CTV performance marketing. Seedtag and Equativ each acquired a video-focused SSP – Beachfront and Sharethrough, respectively – to bolster their repertoire of CTV and video supply.
What I’m wondering is this: How will the buzz at Cannes shape measurement and currency deliberations between now and the end of upfront negotiations?
Only time (and a few too many bottles of rosé) will tell.
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