In TV Ad Land, the road to streaming media convergence still stretches far into the distance.
TV content may be bundled into streaming services, but from the advertiser standpoint, the data is still not part of one simple package. Linear and connected TV advertising still rely on different data sources, which makes campaign planning a mess.
To help smooth out some of the bumps, Ampersand, a TV sales consortium co-owned by Comcast, Charter and Cox rolled out a new measurement platform this week. The platform combines streaming and traditional TV data to give buyers a better idea of incremental reach and frequency on their campaigns.
While the platform should help national advertisers, it’s especially useful for local and multi-market advertisers that are still trying to balance their streaming and traditional TV investments, said Justin Rosen, Ampersand’s SVP of data and analytics.
The disparity between streaming and linear advertising data keenly affects SMBs, Rosen said, because most broadcasters cater ad products to national brands. However, he noted, small and local businesses would spend more on TV if streaming ad sellers offer them enough of the data they need to determine whether TV is a good investment, Rosen said.
Ampersand’s data stream
Ampersand’s new measurement tool combines TV viewing and subscriber data, such as age, gender, address and consumption patterns, from Comcast, Charter and Cox. Rosen said Ampersand also intends to include data from two other telco partners, Altice and Verizon, although he was unable to share a timeline. Ampersand makes this data available to buyers as anonymized IDs.
Until this point, traditional and streaming TV data were “a bit more siloed” in Ampersand’s platform, Rosen said, because they are processed differently. Linear TV viewing data comes from set-top boxes and is usually household-level, for example, whereas streaming data comes from connected devices like smart TVs and gaming consoles.
For buyers, the data fragmentation lowers match rates and adds real time to campaign planning. Regional advertisers have a particular struggle with data silos, Rosen said, because they target smaller cohorts of people, often in one or a few ZIP codes. When data is mismatched, inaccurate or inaccessible in a smaller-scale ad campaign, the risk of reach duplication rises and frequency management becomes even more challenging. The same users see an ad over and over, and advertisers miss their actual reach goals.
But now, “streaming [and traditional] are together [in our] pool of TV insights,” Rosen said, which should make campaign planning more “rational and cohesive” for media buyers and brands.
Going forward, Rosen said, Ampersand buyers will get a quicker and clearer forecast of campaign reach and frequency based on designated market area. This can be especially helpful for brands looking for a “more tactical environment” to chase incremental reach. If an advertiser finds out that certain apps or networks are reaching more of its target audience on linear versus streaming, or vice versa, it can allocate accordingly.
Ultimately, he said, cleaner and quicker measurement should encourage more marketers to make TV a bigger chunk of their ad budgets.
