• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 13, 2024

The U.S. JIC (joint industry committee) will look even more like a MOC (media owner committee) following this morning's announcement that Samsung Ads, the advertising sales division of Samsung Electronics, has joined with full voting rights to certify advertising "currencies" -- audience estimates used by advertisers and agencies to buy advertising from media outlets.

While Samsung Ads is the first smart TV set "OEM" (original equipment manufacturer) to become a member of the JIC, smart TV device manufacturer Roku is one of the JIC's founding members.

"The cross-platform video ecosystem includes numerous parties who both collect and rely on rich data and have a vested interest in connecting viewers with relevant messages that move the needle toward business impact," Executive Vice President of Advanced Advertising at Paramount and Chairman of the JIC's board Travis Scoles said in a statement, adding: "By joining the U.S. Joint Industry Committee, Samsung Ads will serve in a critical leadership position and will help further the JIC’s efforts to work across the industry to accelerate a vision for a more accurate, transparent and modern measurement ecosystem.”

The expansion and diversification of the JIC's membership to include a smart TV manufacturer's sales organization is noteworthy for several reasons.

One is that the JIC does not actually have any advertisers participating on it, only their agencies, which is different from the tripartite -- advertiser/agency/media seller -- structure that JICs operate with in other international markets.

Another is that Samsung Ads effectively grades its own homework vis a vis its own proprietary ACR (automatic content recognition) data about what Samsung TV viewers are watching.

Asked if Samsung Ads can or would seek JIC certification of its ACR data, a JIC spokesperson said "certification is focused on transactional currencies, not on evaluating different datasets like ACR – that is the role of the MRC."

That said, the JIC announced earlier this year that it has added a second certification process for streaming data that is used as a subcomponent of "transactional currencies," although it still has not released details of that process or the baseline requirements associated with certifying streaming data as a subcomponent of transactional currencies.