Spectrum Reach Has a New Cross-Screen Attribution Tool, Connecting TV With the Rest of Digital Advertising

Spectrum Reach is introducing a cross-platform attribution tool in partnership with measurement company TVSquared and identity company Blockgraph, hoping to connect television ad exposure to website visits across its 16 million TV subscribers. As more people stream content and marketers continue to stress measurable and effective advertising, cross-screen attribution becomes much more important, but most attribution tools today are built for a single platform, said Jason Manningham, CEO of Blockgraph. “Historically, all those attributions solutions have been either for linear [connected TV] or digital. This is really bringing together one single place for charter customers to be able to understand the effectiveness of their media,” Manningham told Adweek. Here’s What Google’s Cookie Deprecation Delay Means for Publishers and Marketers Spectrum Reach, the ad sales group for Charter Communications, can see what household saw an ad–whether on linear TV or streamed through one of their services–and then creates a household identifier for those viewers. Measurement company TVSquared is then able to connect that TV ad exposure to digital actions like website visits, so long as the advertiser has the TVSquared pixel on their webpage. Then Blockgraph acts as the identity operating system, allowing that cross-screen data to be used in a privacy-safe way without the need of a third-party vendor to match data. "This is about attributing converged TV—not just linear, not just CTV, but everything, across screens,” said Jo Kinsella, president of TVSquared, who called this kind of always-on attribution a “game changer.” Charter is offering a digital-like attribution tool as the TV industry at large attempts to fight back against tech giants and streaming platforms that have taken share from their once-mighty empire. “As we're looking to evolve the reporting capabilities and accountability for people who advertise on our platforms, this is something we're making as a part of our service,” said Rob Klippel, svp of advanced advertising products and strategy at Spectrum Reach. But some of those tech companies, mainly Apple and Google, are making cross-device attribution harder with the deprecation of ubiquitous targeting signals like third-party cookies and IP addresses within their ecosystems. Manningham said the targeting signal landscape is inevitability going to evolve, so marketers, distributors and data vendors need to be flexible in their strategies. “As those identity signals ebb and flow, having the flexible architecture that allows companies with data to be able to match it off of an ever-evolving array of those signals is really important,” said Manningham. Blockgraph is a joint venture owned by Comcast, Charter and ViacomCBS. Manningham said this attribution tool is only limited to Charter’s footprint and customers.