It's great that we’re now seeing companies like iSpotTV, VIZIO and Samsung bring massive directly measured panels to a market that previously only had Nielsen’s highly curated but relatively small panel.

Epsilon is expanding its relationship with iSpot.tv, the real-time TV measurement company, to supercharge Epsilon’s connected TV (CTV) measurement and reporting capabilities available through Epsilon PeopleCloud. The measurement integration allows marketers to assess the incremental reach of their CTV campaigns over linear TV by tapping into Epsilon’s privacy-protected CORE ID now coupled with iSpot’s industry leading Unified Measurement capabilities.

iSpot, which utilises Epsilon to help inform audience personas and segment-based measurement on its platform, is now the default measurement option for verifying incremental reach campaigns using Epsilon’s CTV platform delivery over linear.

At this point Nielsen’s costs have become so ingrained in the economics of TV advertising that it’s like a sales tax. However, additional taxes are set to be levied with TV networks and advertisers planning to eventually support alternative measurement providers, like Comscore, iSpot.tv, Samba TV and VideoAmp, as currencies. And those taxes can add up. Still, advertisers and their agencies do pay measurement costs. And they are similarly feeling their pocketbooks pinched by the potential fee increases. “The economics are huge…. As an agency, I’m going to subscribe to Comscore, iSpot, VideoAmp and Nielsen?” said one agency executive.

GroupM will also be testing data from iSpot.tv, Comscore and VideoAmp for possible use in the future.

Historically, the technology used to deliver TV programming and advertising to viewers has evolved much faster than the ability to measure it. Now, as CTV and streaming explode, there’s an opportunity for measurement to get ahead, establishing future-proof currencies for today’s multiformat reality.

Tubular Labs can now bridge social video viewing with shopping behavior on Walmart ecommerce for its Tubular Consumer Insights product. The offering, which already provides data correlating social video behavior to Amazon shopping data across thousands of products and categories, now connects the dots between views and shopping behavior on both retailers. Said Josh Schmiesing, Tubular Labs CMO, “With social commerce exploding, Tubular’s Consumer Insights really collapses the funnel for marketers and draws that direct line from reach and engagement through conversion.”

A recent announcement from Tubular Labs reveals new capabilities for its industry-first Consumer Insights product suite. Along with existing data linking social video viewing to Amazon shopping behavior, Tubular has now added Walmart ecommerce data as well. Expanding its data set to include Walmart, Consumer Insights now links audiences with shopping behaviors across the world’s largest retailers. This additional scope provides marketers access to data and insights to identify what’s actually working to drive sales, and make more educated decisions around social video ad buying.

Cadillac retains its leading position as the automaker with the most-viewed car commercial for the week, with a slightly updated take on its spot touting the Lyric BEV. “Lead The Charge” did just that, propelled by targeting across various news-related programs such as ABC World News Tonight, the Today show, NBC Nightly News and CBS Mornings. Interestingly, iSpot estimates that Cadillac spent the most advertising on the NBA playoffs, but the resulting impressions didn’t crack the list of top-five shows generating the most impressions for the ad. According to iSpot’s Ace Metrix survey data, the spot also has the highest brand recognition score of this week’s list, at 90% (the percentage of viewers who remembered it was a Cadillac ad after viewing it).

The movie also benefited from co-marketing national TV campaigns. Applebee’s spent an estimated $4.3 million from two different commercial activations, which was part of a broader marketing deal with the movie. In addition, Porsche was a branded partner for the movie, spending an estimated $1.2 million, according to iSpot.tv.

The event opens with Sean Muller, CEO of iSpot.TV, the leader among the big-data companies offering alternatives to Nielsen that will be a part of this year’s upfront market. In May, Goldman Sachs invested $325 million in iSpot, which was not just a vote of confidence in the company but an indication Wall Street sees data science and advertising technology as a business that will be generating big returns in the relatively short term.

The event opens with Sean Muller, CEO of iSpot.TV, the leader among the big-data companies offering alternatives to Nielsen that will be a part of this year’s upfront market. In May, Goldman Sachs invested $325 million in iSpot, which was not just a vote of confidence in the company but an indication Wall Street sees data science and advertising technology as a business that will be generating big returns in the relatively short term. Muller will be able to explain how iSpot was built, what it shows advertisers that they’ve only guessed at before and what it was able to tell marketers about their investments in huge events like the Olympics and Super Bowl. He will also look ahead at how timely, accurate and granular data can be used by media companies, media buyers and advertisers.

The Finserve industry has undergone one of the fastest digital transformations in marketing history, including how consumers interact with brands in this category. And understanding these declared trends from consumers is critical. New global research commissioned by Cheetah Digital reveals what consumers expect from the Finserve brands they do business with online, the channels they want to connect on, and the data they’re prepared to share in return for more personalized experiences at every stage of the customer lifecycle; from acquisition through to loyalty.

Via iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company. Rankings are by TV ad impressions, for new episodes only. The top TV shows by ad impressions ranking is dominated by NBA playoff games, which increased overall impressions to 4.9 billion from 4.3 billion last week. Second-place NHL playoffs increased ad impressions from 1.02 billion to 1.08 billion.

Catch up quick: ViacomCBS announced a new partnership with VideoAmp last year. NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia (which is now under Warner Bros. Discovery) both linked up with iSpot.tv.Disney is testing new measurement solutions with nearly 100 vendors including iSpot.tv, LiveRamp, VideoAmp, Viant and Moat. It named Samba TV as an official partner in March.

In pointing to success in the platform, Vizio said one media and entertainment client used the platform to quantify a 94% lift in audience engagement and noted 96% of the Vizio viewers who engaged with the campaign wouldn’t have seen it otherwise on linear TV. It noted that an insurance provider used the platform to track conversions to its website, with Vizio ads campaign driving 6.5x more visits to the website than Vizio audiences that didn’t see the ad. Vizio also offers third-party measurement support from partners Nielsen DAR, iSpot.tv, Videoamp, and Comscore, which all license the Inscape data for ad measurement use cases.

Historically, media companies and advertisers relied on Nielsen to establish the media currency that informs the ad buys. However, the rise of players like iSpot.tv, VideoAmp, and ComScore, allow them to select media measurement vendors that have enhanced omnichannel audience viewing data and insights. Advertisers and media companies with more holistic omnichannel media insights can better value media assets and measure potential outcomes. For advertisers, that means more efficient and effective media buys.

With the challenges faced by legacy measurement company Nielsen, and the networks and brands seeking their own solutions, iSpot.tv founder and CEO Sean Muller sees plenty of opportunity. NBCU chose iSpot.tv as its first alternative measurement partner in January. We caught up with Muller a few hours after the Goldman Sachs news broke, and just after he spoke at Adweek’s Convergent TV summit on Wednesday. “My phone’s been blowing up all morning, even as we’re standing here.” For now, Muller says “it’s business as usual,” just more of it. Watch:

Goldman Sachs’ $325 million acquisition of a minority stake comes as iSpot claims that its utility as a TV currency is gaining adoption. The company recently completed 60 currency pilots between NBCUniversal, agency holding companies and brands surrounding the Olympics, Super Bowl and Q1 inventory across NBCU linear and streaming properties. In March, NBCUniversal named iSpot a preferred trading currency for the 2022 Upfront season, and WarnerMedia and Paramount used iSpot in a currency pilot for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
The investment will be deployed to accelerate growth and adoption of real-time, cross-platform TV ad verification, audience measurement and performance metrics for the buy and sell side. That includes scaling engineering and product development, expanding the sales and customer success footprint, continuing to enhance the currencies for the marketplace to transact on for TV and video, and acquiring complementary businesses. “We have been very impressed with iSpot’s world-class data analytics software platform and proprietary systems which have been purpose-built for the increasingly dynamic video measurement space,” said Leonard Seevers, partner and head of media investment for the Private Equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management. “We are incredibly excited to partner with Sean and the iSpot team to drive long-term growth and value creation together.”

Sports Business Journal writer Terry Lefton had some interesting data about advertisers returning to nationally televised NBA games this season. Via Lefton, according to an analysis of data from iSpot.TV, the ad spend this season was $449.6 million on nationally aired NBA games, up from $209.8 million last season with 72 games. Lefton said around 112 brands spent over $1 million on national TV ads on NBA games this season — almost double what the figure was last season. These are the kind of data points that speak to a significant increase for the NBA media rights when they are up post 2024-25. We’ll see how it shakes out.

Holding companies expect to transact some individual deals with clients this year using alternative currencies involving other measurement companies like iSpot.tv and VideoAmp. Such deals are estimated to account for between 10% and 30% of total business in this year’s upfront, according to one research executive. Last month, NBCUniversal said that for the first time, it will be transacting some upfront deals on iSpot, alongside Nielsen.