As the effort to improve TV advertising measurement intensifies, ViacomCBS has partnered with software and data firm VideoAmp in a deal to provide alternative currency for ad transactions.
Nielsen has been the dominant measurement company in media companies lately. The friction has increased since the company’s accreditation was pulled over the summer by the Media Rating Council, a watchdog group. The move has spurred new efforts by several companies on the sell and buy sides to explore alternative ways of handling TV ad sales.
In the ViacomCBS agreement, the company agreed to use VideoAmp’s “commingled” TV viewing data to guarantee linear media transactions against age and gender demographics. ViacomCBS will rely on VideoAmp’s data as an underlying currency to create and guarantee delivery of media campaigns against audience segments through Vantage, ViacomCBS’ advanced advertising platform. “Advanced advertising” A set of tools and methods designed to go beyond traditional Nielsen numbers’ gender and age categories.
VideoAmp, which was established in 2014, combines data collected from set-top boxes and automatic content recognition. The latter is a new innovation that uses smart-TVs to gain insights. In announcing their partnership, the companies said the unified data provides a “deduplicated view of media delivery and advertising performance against any audience across traditional TV, streaming video, and digital media.”
Nielsen isn’t going anywhere, of course, and the friction it is experiencing with large network partners is a cyclical phenomenon that has existed since the earliest days of the TV medium. Still, technological advances and the viewing public’s embrace of streaming have increased the urgency around developing updated measurement solutions. Nielsen One is a new comprehensive offering that it will begin rolling out in 2022.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with ViacomCBS as an alternative currency as they go into a new broadcast season,” Ross McCray, VideoAmp CEO, stated. “We truly value ViacomCBS and their forward-thinking strategy when it comes to a new era of media transaction, measurement and, ultimately, the currency options that power it. We want to unlock value for publishers in a privacy-safe way that keeps their audiences at the forefront, regardless of the channel they’re using.”
This partnership is meant to be friendly for advertisers as well as major media agencies that buy ad time. VideoAmp, as part of its efforts to unite the advertising industry around an alternative measurement option, announced pilot programs this month with five major advertising holding firms. Similar to networks that sell ads, and who fear being undercut by Nielsen metrics, advertisers’ buyers have expressed concern with traditional measurement methods.
“The measurement marketplace needs diversification,” John Halley is ViacomCBS’ Chief Operating Officer for Advertising Revenue. “VideoAmp is an innovator who can help us accelerate our vision around the future of currency. We’re excited to leverage their platform to bring better insights and better measurement to advertisers and their agencies.”