Samba TV Adds Fingerprinting To Chart TV Viewership Across Platforms

Samba TV this morning is announcing an improvement on its second-screen business that allows consumers to seamlessly interact with shows they are watching on the big screen in their living rooms. The company now says that through placement of cable boxes -- hundreds of them -- in its data centers across America, it has added fingerprinting software that can monitor “every TV channel in real time,” and check that against social media and connected devices to determine top trending shows, all over the place.

Though Samba positions the announcement as an app consumers would like, its more immediate application is with advertisers, broadcasters and publishers who can use the data to know how and where advertising messages are being received, and on what devices.

“With live viewership insights from Samba we can actually inform our producers and sponsors how best to leverage the linear broadcast platform through real-time viewing feedback,” said Dan Suratt, EVP, Digital Media and Business Development at A+E Networks, quoted in the press release.

In theory, consumers also could discover, in real-time, which shows or topics are hot and trending where they live, through software built into apps client content provide.

Samba TV is built into smart TVs or set-top boxes, and consumers using second screens such as a tablet are easily connected to information about the shows and actors they’re watching. In the latest wrinkle, Samba seemingly reverses the process, telling clients the ways consumers are accessing the content in real-time. Samba is built into Sony Bravia smart TVs and as last year operated on some 30 million devices. 

Samba TV, until last year known as Flingo, was founded in 2008 by Ashwin Navin, former COO and co-founder of BitTorrent, with several of his team members from BitTorrent, including David Harrison, Omar Zennadi, Todd Johnson and Alvir Navin. Among its investors is Mark Cuban.

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