ACR data

Vizio reported flat revenue growth for Q4. And it’s banking on its ads business – and the viewing data behind it – to help turn things around.

Advertisers are demanding transparency – and their calls are becoming louder and more urgent. But programmers claim their hands are tied over a video-rental-era law from 1988.

Smart TV manufacturer VIZIO announced a census-representative panel built using automatic content recognition data from Inscape, VIZIO’s ACR data subsidiary. VIZIO has access to ACR data from roughly 21 million smart TVs, and Innovid is one of the first measurement providers to use VIZIO’s so-called “National Representative Panel.”

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.

Despite transparency woes, programmatic buying on CTV is evolving. M&A is helping spur maturation in the market. Tremor International, for example, is a “much different business” now that it has integrated Amobee’s tech into its stack, said Chance Johnson, the company’s new chief commercial officer. The next step? Getting more data to plug into those programmatic pipes.

Android has a Privacy Sandbox, too, and it’s going into open beta next year. Learn why this initiative isn’t generating the same ruckus as its close Chrome cousin, which is being hashed out at the W3C. Plus: a rundown on transparency (or the lack thereof) and the related data land grab in CTV.

It’s almost impossible for advertisers to know who’s really sitting in front of a TV screen, and they typically aren’t told what content their ads are running against, either. TV measurement companies are turning back to panels for help. Panel-based measurement provider TVision announced a $16 million venture round led by alternative TV measurement provider iSpot.

Samba announced its merge with the St. Louis-based AI startup Disruptel to bolster its machine learning chops, namely in automatic content recognition (ACR). Samba plans to incorporate Disruptel’s tech, which is built on show-level content identification and analysis, into its ACR-based measurement.

The benefits of technology are seemingly endless. Yet despite the many doors that smart TVs will open in the years ahead, they won’t – by themselves – provide the media industry with an accurate view of who’s using them, writes Jonathan Wells, SVP of data science at Nielsen.

To plan, target and measure media buys on TV, advertisers need to resolve identity at the household level, which calls for full media transparency, said Kelly Metz, managing director of linear and advanced TV activation at Omnicom Media Group. Kelly Metz will be speaking about the future of TV measurement at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference on October 17-18 in New York City. Click here to register.