The measurement of TV is in disarray, as audience behavior change accelerates and traditional firms struggle to catch up.
That is according to a man who has just leaped from helping big TV distributors sell digital ads to helping advertisers analyze and optimize new-wave TV ad spending.
“COVID’s accelerated the fragmentation of audiences – and I think that really, really forces a new measurement paradigm for television,” says Bob Ivins, the former Ampersand chief data officer who became chief strategy officer at TVSquared in September.
In this video interview with Beet.TV editorial advisor Jon Watts, Ivins says the game is on amongst upstart vendors who say they offer a far better way to measure than TV than the big competitors ever did.
We're excited to welcome Bob Ivins as our Chief Strategy Officer! He says, "TVSquared has not only built a world-class, always-on platform, but has also worked tirelessly to push the industry out of its comfort zone to change it for the better." https://t.co/Z4LkcFwUQm pic.twitter.com/3ijKdQ8Fga
— TVSquared (@tvsquared) September 21, 2020
Rebooting measurement
“I think TV is reinventing itself in front of our very eyes,” Ivins says. “Cable subscriptions are down. Streaming activity is up. I think legacy research companies are kind of struggling.
“So it gives, I think, an opportunity for innovative measurement companies like ourselves to sneak in there.”
TVSquared helps brands learn how TV advertising is driving traffic to their websites.
One of the company’s two main software pieces is ADvantage, a platform providing offering insight in to how each TV impression drives revenue through online, mobile and second screen for advertisers looking for accurate same-day TV attribution.
The company’s Predict tool helps advertisers automate the creation of their buy specifications based on predictive analysis of historical attribution data that is optimized, whether the objective is to generate sales, registrations, web site visits or any other kind of response.
“We have a direct to brand business that’s scaling quickly,” Ivins says. “We work with big ad sellers or big ads selling organisations. And we’ve trained 2,000, 3,000 people in a matter of weeks. And they’re out there delivering quantifiable evidence that TV drives business outcomes.”
Supply chain on the blockchain
Ivins’ new employer has recently been striking deals to extend its capabilities.
In one, TVSquared has partnered with Blockgraph, the blockchain-powered attempt to use Bitcoin-like technology to create a trusted ledger of actions in an ad transaction.
They say it will use Blockgraph’s identity and viewer authentication technology plus TVSquared’s attribution technology to offer “omni-channel TV measurement and audience activation”.
Ivins tells Beet.TV: “Blockgraph is this peer-to-peer ability to kind of re-aggregate all those audiences. That’s exciting, especially because an advertiser who launches a campaign, they’re not going to do it in one walled garden – they’re going to do it across the entire media landscape.
“You need to be able to give them metrics like cumulative unduplicated reach that cuts across platforms.”