Comscore Will Measure Sling TV's National Addressable Data as Part of Renewed Dish Agreement

Comscore and Dish, which first teamed up to measure Dish's addressable impressions in 2012, have struck a strategic partnership that extends Comscore's data license to virtual MVPD Sling TV. The new deal means that Comscore will be able to measure all of Sling, as well as all of the national addressable on the Dish footprint. The partnership makes Comscore the first independent measurement service to get the rights to measure national addressable across Dish and Sling TV footprints. Comscore will also provide dynamic ad insertion measurement of addressable advertising on Dish's video-on-demand content that it delivers through set-top boxes, its streaming service Dish Anywhere and on third-party OTT apps that require Dish credentials as log-ins. Comscore can measure all of Sling's data “Our strategy is to be a census-based provider of information,” said Scott Worthem, Comscore's evp of strategic partnerships. “If you think of what we’ve been doing with the MVPDs, with their linear data for a number of years, we've accumulated households and accumulated all the devices for set-top boxes in the households, we've now done the same with Sling.” Comscore has previously been able to measure cross-platform addressable impressions across OTT, mobile, desktop and traditional TV for both Dish and Sling TV since 2018, but the measurements for the MVPD were only at individual campaign levels. Now, Comscore can measure all of Sling’s data. The extended agreement will allow Comscore to measure a broader set of data in the TV and video ecosystem, which will allow the buy-side to have a better handle on viewing that’s occurring across both linear and OTT TV, Worthem said. “We’ll be able to do things like perform campaign results like attribution that we might not have been able to do before,” said Worthem. “We'll be able to measure content in the full context across linear and OTT. And we'll be able to use advanced audiences so that our clients can plan and look at results with things like auto and CPG.” The renewed deal also expanded some rights agreements to what Worthem refers to as “2020 needs-based.” Comscore will be able to use first-party data in a privacy-compliant way that will allow marketers to bring in their own data to use for campaign results and planning. “We traditionally use third-party matching capabilities, which is pretty prevalent in the industry,” said Worthem, noting that those capabilities go beyond age and gender. “But first-party allows a client to bring their own data in, and we can use it for those kinds of attributes. We also looked at how we can use the data for Sling and Dish together, so we could report more broadly.” The last major addition to the new deal is a formal rights agreement for national addressable measurement with Dish. For nine years, Comscore has been measuring the two minutes an hour of local addressable inventory on Dish. “We've worked with Dish, so that we can help them measure national addressable ads that they will serve in the 14 minutes an hour on their various networks,” said Worthem. “We believe in census-level measurement across the board, that’s our addressable approaches, every impression counts, no impressions left behind. So this the same approach we're applying to national addressable.” Disney+ and ESPN+ Land on Comcast’s Xfinity Platforms