ACR

At CES in Las Vegas, Kristina Shepard, head of US brand sales at Roku, tells AdExchanger why the company decided to start manufacturing its own line of smart TVs.

For advertisers itching to use automatic content recognition (ACR) to target their messages to gamers on their CTVs, 2023 may be their year. The expected expansion of in-game advertising to console games this year should unlock more applications of ACR data in gaming.

Advanced TV presents a robust set of opportunities for data-driven advertising and measurement. But does that mean ATV will supplant linear in buyers’ marketing strategies? Well, it’s more complicated than that – and buyers need to understand how to successfully manage and optimize across both linear and streaming.

The leadership team is out at LG Ads Solutions. As of Friday, at least two of Alphonso’s top brass were pushed out, including CEO Raghu Kodige and Alphonso co-founder and executive chairman Ashish Chordia. What gives?

Smart TV manufacturer VIZIO announced a census-representative panel built using automatic content recognition data from Inscape, VIZIO’s ACR data subsidiary. VIZIO has access to ACR data from roughly 21 million smart TVs, and Innovid is one of the first measurement providers to use VIZIO’s so-called “National Representative Panel.”

Lots of people are talking about addressable TV. “Data-driven linear,” though? Not so much. But despite the fact that data-driven linear (DDL) doesn’t get as much attention as its somewhat sexier addressable cousin, it’s becoming an increasingly popular choice for linear advertisers attempting to make more informed media buys.

Despite transparency woes, programmatic buying on CTV is evolving. M&A is helping spur maturation in the market. Tremor International, for example, is a “much different business” now that it has integrated Amobee’s tech into its stack, said Chance Johnson, the company’s new chief commercial officer. The next step? Getting more data to plug into those programmatic pipes.

Samba announced its merge with the St. Louis-based AI startup Disruptel to bolster its machine learning chops, namely in automatic content recognition (ACR). Samba plans to incorporate Disruptel’s tech, which is built on show-level content identification and analysis, into its ACR-based measurement.

Regardless of the ongoing debate as to the viability of panels, the TV measurement industry is starting to increasingly rely on automatic content recognition (ACR) data, especially as set-top box data becomes less available. But like any other form of data collection, it’s nicer if you ask first.

Vizio has walked a tricky tightrope since launching its advertising business in late 2019. But after a tough first year on the market, with Vizio down by more than half over the past 12 months, the company is seeing the improvement it needs from the platform side of its house.