New TVREV Report Predicts Sunset of Set-Top-Box Data, Leaving ACR in Control
The report comes at a critical time for the industry as almost all the major network groups have announced plans to expand their measurement partners beyond Nielsen, making use of companies that rely heavily on ACR data and the level of detail it brings.
A new report from leading analyst firm TVREV says industry consensus is that set top box data is on its way out, while ACR data from smart TVs is poised to become the industry’s primary measurement source.
ACR (automatic content recognition data) data from smart TVs provides granular, second-by-second measurement across streaming, linear, over the air and on demand, and that, says the report’s author, TVREV Lead Analyst Alan Wolk, is why it is uniquely positioned to take on digital.
“Digital publishers like Google and Facebook can provide brand managers with extremely detailed and granular reports around who saw their ads, when, where and how, and what they did next,” said Wolk. “With ACR, television is able to provide that level of granularity at scale too, something they could not do when everyone was just relying on Nielsen. That should help advertisers justify spending more money on television.”
The report comes at a critical time for the industry as almost all the major network groups have announced plans to expand their measurement partners beyond Nielsen, making use of companies that rely heavily on ACR data and the level of detail it brings.
To explore the value of ACR data, TVREV focused on the three largest US OEMs—LG, Samsung and VIZIO. Collectively, all three receive ACR data from over 80 million opted-in TVs and use that data to provide value for programmers and advertisers, particularly those making use of the OEM’s popular FAST platforms.
At a time when viewers can be found on both streaming and linear TV, the OEMs and their ACR data are uniquely positioned to bridge that gap.
“ACR is one of the few places where you can access a single source view of television where you have one data set that covers linear and streaming,” noted Justin Evans, Global Head of Analytics & Insights at Samsung Ads. “ACR is already one of the only ways, maybe the only way, that an advertiser can understand their whole TV buy across streaming and linear. We think it’s going to be an integral part of the way every advertiser manages TV in the future. Linear and streaming will coexist, so you’ll need a single-source data set.”
ACR data also helps the OEMs to compete against digital by offering up a level of granularity that had heretofore only been a pipe tree for television.
“Since the advent of the internet, the goal for TV measurement was second by second, person-level data. Now, thanks to ACR, we actually have it,” said Justin Fromm, Head of Research at LG Ads. “ACR data gives us this level of intimate knowledge about a consumer which we can then share with brands for targeting, much in the same way that they use their own first party data. The beauty of ACR is that we can use it for targeting on both linear and streaming, which is key as that is going to be TV’s reality for the foreseeable future.”
One key area where ACR data provides value for the television industry is around business outcomes. Helping advertisers to understand how their campaigns impact sales and brand awareness helps emphasize the value of TV advertising.
As Ken Norcross, Senior Director of Data Strategy at VIZIO explained, “ACR gives you a connection point between all of your media tactics, because you can use either an IP address directly, or you can use a match partner like a Liveramp or Experian that will allow you to tie together all facets of the campaign. So the granularity and the scale of the data, as well as the ability to match it to other pieces of information that either can be first party or third party creates a unique value proposition on the attribution side.”
“The emotional impact of the sight, sound and motion you get from a television commercial makes it so much more valuable than a banner ad,” Wolk stated. “With ACR data, the television industry will finally be able to prove something that everyone knew intuitively, but lacked hard evidence for.”
The full report can be downloaded from the TVREV website.
For further information, contact info@tvrev.com
