Cross-channel TV advertising platform Simulmedia has struck a deal with media measurement company Comscore to bolster its predictive TV program technology TV+ for entertainment marketers and other brands, in finding the right viewers to sample and engage with TV shows.

Comscore's custom audience segments will be incorporated into TV+ to help entertainment marketers target audiences across data-driven linear TV and connected TV.

Dave Morgan, chief executive officer of Simulmedia, says that increasingly, real cross-platform media buying for entertainment needs to account for streaming viewing -- especially as more entertainment marketers need to find and engage audiences in a fragmented market.

“This is where the Comscore data is helpful -- being able to understand and use those behaviors cross-channel,” he says. The key is to understand streaming behaviors in order to better target ads in linear and drive a streaming behavior -- or to better understand streaming behaviors to change a linear TV behavior to [for example] sell a subscription.”

The bigger focus going forward is driving viewership. This comes as more ad-supported streaming platforms are coming online from the likes of Netflix and Disney+.

“Selling a subscription isn’t good enough if you are selling ads,” says Morgan, adding that streamers now need to drive viewership -- which is something Netflix, among others, has to consider going forward. “Driving tune-in will be important."

Simulmedia's predictive technology needs stronger streaming capability -- something Comscore has to offer, he says.

Live sports TV programming platforms are one potential group of marketers that could benefit from Simulmedia's enhanced predictive TV technology. Morgan says if mid-level and/or niche sports brands can gain 10% more audience, that’s a big deal.

Non-entertainment marketing brands will also benefit. “All of our marketers that use our platform for cross channel and for streaming, will benefit because we will be better able to predict when audiences are available.”

One of the biggest obvious challenges for marketers today, he says, is “to manage, cross channel, linear TV and streaming frequency at a household level with precision because today it sucks. And sucks because people are buying them separately.”

It is not just managing frequency/duplication by network, program or day and time, but by channel and streaming availability. “The idea is to see no difference between someone available on, say, Peacock and HGTV, or ESPN and CBS.”

Simulmedia’s TV+ already has existing Nielsen data, set-top box data, consumer data, some streaming data, and other sources.

TV+ forecasting technology has access to over 250 premium inventory partners and automated planning, buying, activation and measurement processes.