iSpot.tv Acquires Ace Metrix To Combine Brand And Business Outcomes Measurement
- by Karlene Lukovitz @KLmarketdaily, January 15, 2021
Cross-platform TV ad measurement and attribution company iSpot.tv has acquired Ace Metrix, which performs attitudinal measurement for TV and video creative.
iSpot, which measures advertising reach, conversion rates and lift across TV and streaming TV, will integrate Ace’s infrastructure and technologies for creative assessment to inform the planning, buying and brand impact of TV advertising.
The combination will enable a single-source solution for tracking TV and video advertising business outcomes and brand impact — including a unified view of audience reach, consumer attention, brand impact and return on TV and connected TV ads, according to the announcement.
Brands frequently seek both to drive sales and brand equity with the same campaign/creative, noted Sean Muller, CEO and founder of iSpot.tv.
iSpot said the acquisition brings its annual brand contracts to 500-plus, including 96% of U.S. TV networks.
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Without a full and detailed Technical Appendix or better a full MRC accreditation the claims iSpot makes need extremely careful assessment. To my knowledge, iSpot is not MRC "Accredited" nor has submitted to accreditation. In addition, any reference by any reporter for any media trade publication to "advertsising reach" shoud be explicitely defined. That phrase covers a multitiude of sins and can often mislead the witness! It could mean anything from "viewable impressions" reach to target audience exposed, or eyes-on, reach possibly with attention (a creative not a media measure). Only the latter has any chance of generating an outcome with a consumer as long as the measurement meets MRC Standards - at a minimum! The former is merely a proof of an ad rendered to a device; has no persons dimension; and should not be used as a media currency per Geroge Ive, MRC, even if the content is rendered to MRC Standards.
Further media only contributes ~35% to any brand outcome effects from a campaign. (Generally agreed by both Bill Harvey and also Dr. Leslie Wood.) So references to TV's ROI in terms of brand outcomes is specious. And yes, the WFA in their Cross-Media Measurement Technical Guidelines made the same error.
In the current era of rampant fake news and lies, surely the trade press shoud not knowingly be pawns of any vendors. So, can "we" increase "our" efforts to report more precisely and reliably in the ad and media space to protect and correctly inform our readers?
To that end, if there is anything I have missed or that is incorrect in the above please advise.
FYI: MRC is currently developing Standards for Outcome Measurement which will inevitably include references to the various attribution techniques and models available. Attribution models for TV/video were heavily criticized in a recent report by Sequent Partners developed for CIMM - Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement.
Tony, although they are trying to give the impression that they are doing whatever they do for all of "TV", I would guess that they are really referring to whatever portion of a "TV" buy is digital in nature---not the usually far larger component which is "linear". As for the definition of "outcomes" here we move into the usual gray area where almost any reaction by a user might be considered an "outcome"---like clicking through to the advertiser's website---which happens well under 1% of the time. What is far more difficult to measure is how a given "ad exposure"---even if defined by the mere presence of the ad on a screen as opposed to anyone watching----motivated sales for the brand that presented the ad. In addition to not knowing who---if anyone----- watched a particular ad on a screen, you have to consider the effect of all of the other ads for the same brand that the same consumer might have been exposed to---including many on "linear TV". I wonder how such information is factored into the equation without accounting for the fact that 50-60%of the assumed ad exposures never took place in terms of consumers noting or watching the ads?
Terrific additional points! Will John Grono remind us of the superiority of Marketing Mix Modelling to account for the entire marketing campaign elements in achieving outcomes?