TV attribution

Television commerce, or T-commerce, is similar to shoppable TV: both refer to buying something you see on television. But shoppable TV is far more nascent – and also has different implications on attribution.

Aiming for one thing and being measured against another is absurd. But this is how the multibillion-dollar TV industry has operated for decades.

2023 was an eventful year in the land of TV ad measurement, from buy-side demand for performance-oriented CTV campaigns to the dramatic competition between alternative TV measurement providers.

On Wednesday, iSpot acquired 605, a TV measurement and attribution company that brings iSpot’s US household footprint to 82.7 million.

State privacy laws could make it a lot harder for advertisers to use IP addresses – a foundational signal for CTV ad targeting and attribution for well over a decade.

MadHive, the CTV ad buying platform, announced a $300 million investment from Goldman Sachs. Now, the company is turning its attention to measurement and attribution companies that might make lucrative acquisition targets.

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.

Programmatic buying is a mainstay of digital advertising, but its role in the TV ecosystem is relatively new – and very different. To make programmatic work for TV, digital-native marketers will need a much broader media strategy, said Nicole Whitesel, EVP of advanced TV and Publicis Media, who will be speaking at Programmatic I/O, taking place in Las Vegas from May 23-25.

This year’s Upfronts need to continue the conversation about measurement that includes outcome-based guarantees in a linear and, eventually, convergent TV world. Otherwise, the TV industry risks falling further and further behind digital capabilities, writes Spencer Lambert, manager of product and partnership success at datafuelX.

Like most DTC companies, smart ring startup Oura spends a lot of money on paid social, but it’s also been boosting its organic marketing efforts and experimenting with search and linear television. Last year, Oura started working with Rockerbox to validate its investment choices.

TV is finally beginning to mine the powerful digital marketing capabilities that big search engines and social networks offer. But there’s a long history of trust issues in digital advertising, writes Jason Fairchild, CEO of tvScientific.

According to Canoe Ventures, ad efficiency comes down to one thing: scale. On Wednesday, the data and technology provider announced four major broadcasters that signed on to enable its national addressable TV solution.

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Since the 1950s, marketers have instinctively bought into the power of TV advertising, despite the fact that we have never been able to effectively measure its impact. This somewhat inconvenient truth, coupled with the high cost of TV advertising, […]

When advertisers think of the cutting edge of OTT advertising, they’re probably not thinking of Amazon as much as they are Roku, Hulu or YouTube. Despite having great video products, Amazon has not ballyhooed itself as a source for great video inventory. There’s not lot of inventory on Prime, for instance, and Twitch functions as […]

“On TV and Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Maggie Zhang, executive vice president of video research and insights at Dentsu Aegis Network. Nowadays, anyone can easily find enthusiastic advocates for TV attribution at every turn, myself included. As we celebrate the newfound capabilities to […]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A man walks into a bar after seeing a TV ad … but there’s no way for the advertiser to prove it ever happened. On Tuesday, TV data company Alphonso inked a partnership with PlaceIQ to use the latter’s location data as a bridge between sitting on the […]

The CEO of TripAdvisor, Steve Kaufer, has a motto: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring.” Which is why TV had to prove itself before earning a spot on the travel review site’s media plan. Until 2013, TripAdvisor spent most of its budget on digital, mainly because of its measurability. There’s a lack of “direct, […]

Advertisers know linear TV spots drive store visits. Proving it is another story. On Tuesday, Snap-owned location company Placed released a tool that attempts to tie the two together. To power its offering, Placed is licensing viewership data from Inscape, the data division within smart-TV manufacturer Vizio, which has access to around 8 million opted-in […]

When the head bean-counter at Brand X walks into the CMO’s office and wants proof that TV spending works, the CMO needs a better answer than “My gut tells me it does.” “Ask anyone in charge of a TV budget, and they’ll tell you that they intuitively know it works,” said David Staas, president of […]

Just about every brand with a TV budget wants the answer to a simple question: How many people took action after seeing my ad on TV? But it’s not the type of question that can be answered by a gross rating point (GRP). To better understand the impact of its TV advertising, Ford and its […]

CPG brands are the big TV spenders, but ecommerce and subscription startups like Gilt and Birchbox are coming on strong. Take Urban Ladder, a Bangalore, India-based online retailer specializing in home furniture and décor. While the company historically focused on digital, it has lately begun to include TV for awareness building. It declined to share […]

Marketers struggle to link digital conversion data with television tune-in campaigns, because there’s no single system that connects disparate data points – like linking marketers’ CRM systems to Nielsen ratings. “The promise of digital is accountability and we need a solid, closed-loop system to make the connection,” according to Charlie Fiordalis, chief digital officer for […]