TV ad measurement is a numbers game.
On Wednesday, iSpot acquired 605, a TV measurement and attribution company that brings iSpot’s US household footprint to 82.7 million with the addition of 605’s licensed set-top box data from Charter covering 16.6 million homes.
Although iSpot declined to share the financial terms of the deal, iSpot says it’s the company’s largest acquisition to date. Over the past two and a half years, iSpot bought TV audio streaming app Tunity, ad-scoring firm Ace Metrix and TV ad measurement company DRMetrix.
According to CEO Sean Muller, iSpot had its eye on 605 as a way to get more data and tech, expand its market share on the sell side and solidify its position in the TV measurement and currency arenas.
The future of TV measurement hinges on big data, Muller said, which includes viewership data and census-level data from third parties.
The acquisition of 605 “is another investment in big data,” he said.
Getting bigger
In addition to data from Charter, 605 also licenses viewing data from Vizio-owned Inscape (as does iSpot) and has a roster of third-party data partners it uses for both advanced audience segmentation and attribution.
That data is a “very powerful” complement to iSpot’s own attribution product, which mostly uses first-party data, Muller said. The more information a company has about consumer buying behavior, the better it can help marketers plan and measure campaigns based on purchase consideration and sales.
“We’re building [more] outcomes-based measurement into our cross-platform [solution],” Muller said. “We also believe outcomes will [have] an important [role] in the future of TV currencies.”
And 605 considers iSpot a good fit as its new owner because of the mutual focus on outcomes-based measurement.
“Our collective focus is on using business outcomes to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of brand investment,” 605 President Tom Keaveney told AdExchanger. Keaveney will remain president of 605 and help oversee the integration of the two companies.
To measure outcomes, 605 links TV ad exposures to third-party data sets, including search, location and sales data from verticals such as consumer packaged goods and auto through partnerships with Catalina, PlaceIQ and Polk Automotive Solutions, among others.
It’s able to provide attribution for most advertiser verticals without requiring first-party data, Muller said.
The 605 platform also allows clients to build advanced audience segments using third-party data directly within its platform as a managed service, an ability iSpot doesn’t currently offer. Clients have to create those segments within their own systems, then onboard them to iSpot.
The campaign planning and optimization tools within 605’s platform should help make iSpot’s planning capabilities more efficient.
ISpot some sellers
But iSpot is also looking to expand its client base on the sell side.
Roughly 80% of iSpot’s customers are on the demand side, whereas most of 605’s revenue comes from the sell side, said Muller, who added that most of the major TV networks use outcomes-based measurement from 605.
As a provider of TV measurement and currency offerings, iSpot must be able to service both sides of a transaction. According to Muller, this acquisition “quite literally doubles our market share on the sell side.”
What now?
All 85 of 605’s employees are joining iSpot, bringing the latter’s headcount to just over 460. Dolan Family Ventures, which backed 605, will remain a minority investor in the combined company.
ISpot’s top two longer-term priorities will be to incorporate 605’s tech stack and start to roll out combined ad products for both buyers and sellers.
Muller said he expects the two tech stacks to be fully integrated by next year.
But first on the to-do list is upgrading attribution.
“We’re going to be taking 605’s outcomes measurement to our brand clients almost immediately,” Muller said. After that, at some point within the next year, iSpot will start allowing clients to create advanced segments using data from both companies within its planning platform.
Eventually, when iSpot and 605 finish fully combining their data, their ad products will “work very fluidly together,” Muller said.
