• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 2, 2018

iSpot.tv, a measurement tool for television, has found a way to connect its TV ad impression measurement and performance analytics platform to digital audience segments through LiveRamp's IdentityLink. Now the two companies have partnered to bring television media buys into the digital mix.

The partnership brings digital measurement tools to television, including broadcast, OTT, syndicated, local, and others.

iSpot.tv built software that catalogs every advertisement that runs on television. A three-year-old partnership with Inscape allows the company to leverage the automated content recognition (ACR) technologies embedded into the television to detect and track every ad in the catalog across 10 million devices in the United States.

The new partnership with LiveRamp tells the brand whether the tv advertisement generated the demand, said Sean Muller, iSpot.tv chief executive officer. The integration enables iSpot.tv's technology to integrate with the brand's digital attribution platform using the same identifiers from LiveRamp.

For example, automakers have been building audience segments in digital for years. The segments might identify those in-market for an SUV in the next few months, he said. Now the partnership enables the auto brand, for example, to push the segments to iSpot.

Now marketers can take the segments and run the analytics to tell them how effectively they are reaching the consumers and validate whether the segment converts into demand.  

The partnership extends iSpot.tv's ability to measure the ads independently of the programming and track the viewer to brand websites, Muller said. "It maps the behavior of the viewer on the web based on the advertisements running on television," he said. "For an automaker, we know the ads the person sees and can tell when they go to the site."

The platform identifies things like when an ad airs on television and the propensity for the viewer to change the channel, or when an advertisement airs on a television screen and other digital actions occur in the home tied to the same IP address.

The iSpot device graph tracks web and app activity, connecting to its TV panel of 8 million IP-enabled TV sets. The technology also can be integrated into search advertising and marketing, allowing marketers to track the influence of the TV ads on searches and website visits.