GSTV Partners with Vistar Media for Ad Serving Technology
New Tech Supports Increased GSTV Programmatic Demand
New York, New York - Vistar Media, the leading global provider of software for programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH), and GSTV, the national video network engaging and entertaining targeted audiences at scale across tens of thousands of fuel retailers, have formed a strategic partnership for Vistar to power GSTV’s network of digital displays with ad serving software.
For the past four years, GSTV has seen massive success participating in Vistar’s programmatic marketplace through the Vistar supply-side platform (SSP). Building on that trusted partnership, support and its rapid network growth, GSTV has now transitioned its ad serving system onto Vistar’s technology. Vistar’s ad server enables GSTV to ensure reliable content and ad delivery across more than 28,000 locations nationwide.
Partnering with Vistar to streamline its business operations technology enables GSTV to focus on its core expertise of creating and delivering compelling media experiences across its network. Vistar’s software takes on the complexities of scheduling, managing and reporting on ads, while also enabling automation for GSTV’s content requirements.
“We are focused on growing our cutting-edge network along with developing meaningful media experiences that drives action and creates lasting brand impressions. To optimize the flexibility that buyers require at our scale, we knew that we needed to adopt a future-facing ad-serving solution,” said Winston Benedict, Chief Technology Officer, GSTV. “Vistar is a proven partner that combines enterprise-grade engineering with nimble innovation to meet the needs of our growing network. This partnership sets our network up for success today and in the future and ultimately to best serve our client partners.”
Working hand in hand, the Vistar and GSTV engineering teams have created a scalable solution to maintain the high-quality media experience across GSTV’s tens of thousands of locations. In the past year alone, GSTV’s programmatic business has more than doubled YOY. With the upgrade, the new Vistar ad-server unlocks additional unsold GSTV supply for programmatic monetization for the first time to meet growing demand.
“GSTV offers advertisers the ability to reach a highly engaged audience while at the pump, and we’re thrilled they have selected us as their partner to set their network up for optimal success,” said Eric Lamb, SVP, Supply at Vistar Media. “By implementing our ad serving solution, GSTV can now seamlessly manage their inventory and deliver content and advertising across a stable network.”
Vistar’s ad serving and network management technology is available to enterprise and startup networks globally. For more information about Vistar, please direct inquiries to info@vistarmedia.com. To learn more about programmatic advertising on GSTV, please visit gstv.com/programmatic.
About Vistar Media
Vistar Media is the leading global provider of programmatic technology for out-of-home, bringing enterprise-grade software that was purpose-built for the unique requirements of digital signage. Vistar provides a global demand-side platform (DSP) for buyers to activate data-driven programmatic campaigns and a supply-side platform (SSP) to connect signage operators to digital revenue. Vistar also powers some of the world’s most advanced signage networks with device & content management software (Cortex) and ad serving technology. Vistar was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in New York, NY. For more information, visit www.vistarmedia.com.
About GSTV
GSTV is a data-driven, national video network entertaining targeted audiences at scale across tens of thousands of fuel retailers. Reaching one in three American adults monthly, GSTV engages viewers with full sight, sound and motion video at an essential waypoint of their consumer journey, and GSTV is the only consolidated and scaled digital media platform in the convenience and fuel channel. Analysis of billions of consumer purchases demonstrates that GSTV viewers spend significantly more across retailers, services, consumer goods and other sectors following a fuel transaction. While offering consumers entertaining and informative content, GSTV drives immediate action and creates lasting brand impressions, delivering measurable results for the world’s largest advertisers. Visit www.gstv.com for more information.
New Affinity Solutions Study Commissioned by GSTV Uncovers Link Between Fueling Behavior and Elevated Consumer Spending
Analysis of hundreds of millions of card transactions reveals fuel purchase as predictive of a fourfold increase in spend across major retail categories
DETROIT, MI and NEW YORK, NY (May 11, 2022) – Today, Affinity Solutions, a leading consumer insights company, and GSTV, the national video network engaging and entertaining targeted audiences at scale across tens of thousands of fuel retailers, unveil a new analysis that shows a predictive relationship between a fuel transaction and increased retail spending. Key findings include that, in the three hours after fueling, consumers spend 3.7 times more money, transact 4.2 times more frequently, and are over four times more likely to make at least one additional purchase compared to those not fueling that day.
“GSTV came to us with a hypothesis: since consumers often stop for fuel as part of a larger shopping trip, a fuel transaction might be a good predictor of immediate future spending,” said Phil Lore, EVP & Chief Revenue Officer at Affinity Solutions. “Our analysis, spanning hundreds of millions of credit and debit card transactions, across 20 million accounts, bears this out. As marketers look for data-driven opportunities to increase media performance, these findings identify a uniquely pivotal moment along the shopper journey to strongly influence consumer decision-making.”
Of particular interest to marketers, Affinity Solutions quantified the lift in spend propensity for more than a hundred of the country’s top retailers and restaurants, offering advertisers unique insights to help them develop strategies to drive more in-store sales. The analysis quantified the increase in spend at specific key retailers following a fuel transaction including Walmart (+5.0x), Kroger (+4.9x), Target (+4.0x), Walgreens (+3.8x), Taco Bell (5.8x), Home Depot (5.2x), and Chick-fil-A (6.6x), among others. The study also found that a fuel transaction predicts substantially higher levels of spend across major categories, including quick service restaurants (+5.3x), home supply (+5.2x), grocery (+4.8x), big box (+4.0x), casual dining (+4.0x), and pharmacy (+3.6x). Spend behavior was analyzed in the three hours immediately following a fuel transaction from 4/1-7/31/21 and compared to active accounts without an observed fuel transaction that day.
“Advertisers have long understood the importance of reaching viewers at precisely the right moment. This research sheds new light on just how important certain moments can be,” said Eric Sherman, EVP, Insights and Analytics, GSTV. “Affinity Solutions has uncovered a “fueling multiplier” -- an amplification of an ad’s potential impact based on its temporal and geospatial proximity to elevated consumer spending, creating a unique messaging opportunity for marketers.”
The analysis period for the study came more than a year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic during a lull in cases when there was widespread vaccine availability and prior to the uptick of cases from the Delta variant. In addition to comparing post-fueling behavior to those not fueling that day, the research also looked at changes to post-fueling spend behavior over time, specifically comparing April through July of 2019 against the same period in 2021. The study saw post-fuel consumer spending rise almost 50% in the three hours following a fuel transaction.
The release of this new data and insights comes on the heels of GSTV’s recent announcement of GSTV AMPLIFY, a retail media network that offers CPG marketers the ability to complement and strengthen existing omnichannel brand plans and strategies. With multipliers of spend likelihood defined across categories and key retailers, the new data from Affinity Solutions further demonstrates the value of the unique moment on the consumer journey that GSTV offers to marketers. To learn more about how GSTV reaches consumers in proximity to key retail channels, visit GSTV.com/amplify.
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About Affinity Solutions
Affinity is the authoritative source of truth for news outlets, not-for-profits, research firms and businesses in the US and the only source for purchase insights that can be analyzed by demographic, geographic, lifestyle segment and political affiliation. We power consumer engagement predicated on actual purchase data to help marketers move at the speed of the consumer and improve people's lives. Affinity is powered by Panorama, which is an always-on, privacy-safe platform, within a safe-haven environment. Panorama deterministically matches actual purchase data, and complementary data sets, for audience scoring and validation that drives precision marketing.
To learn more about Affinity Solutions visit www.affinitysolutions.com
About GSTV
GSTV is a data-driven, national video network entertaining targeted audiences at scale across tens of thousands of fuel retailers. Reaching more than one in three American adults monthly, GSTV engages viewers with full sight, sound, and motion video at an essential waypoint of their consumer journey, and GSTV is the only consolidated and scaled digital media platform in the convenience and fuel channel. Analysis of billions of consumer purchases demonstrates that GSTV viewers spend significantly more across retailers, services, consumer goods and other sectors following a fuel transaction. While offering consumers entertaining and informative content, GSTV drives immediate action and creates lasting brand impressions, delivering measurable results for the world’s largest advertisers. Visit www.gstv.com for more information and follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Adweek: How GSTV Works With Music Artists and Film Companies
by Meseret Ambachew, Adweek
GSTV's chief executive officer and president Sean McCaffrey says his company reaches 40% of people across the U.S.
The digital OOH company invited MGM Studios' CMO during its NewFronts presentation to talk about the success of its content partnership
Retail digital display company GSTV presented at the IAB’s NewFronts for the third time on the event’s final day, held virtually.
The company touted its reach of 105 million people across the U.S., mainly through displaying content at gas pump stations, which is 40% of adults in the country, according to company chief executive officer and president Sean McCaffrey. With the average consumer pumping gas at least three times a month, the company chalks that up to 15 minutes of time spent with its display.
“The experience itself is outside the home when you use that three to four minutes of dead air,” McCaffrey told Adweek.
Gas prices are at an all-time high, but the alarming numbers haven’t appeared to limit GSTV’s ability to cut content partnership deals, driving its ad business and audience growth. And it’s becoming defter at showing the impact of those deals. Through GSTV’s recent partnership with insights company Affinity solutions, the company found it is 50% more efficient than digital video for campaigns like consumer packaged goods.
Raising the volume on music artists
PG County, Maryland native music artist, Reggie Becton, was invited to speak at its presentation. Becton is in a partnership with Live Nation Entertainment, which currently displays four-minute-long content through GSTV.
Artist Reggie Becton saw his listenership almost triple after his Live Nation video featured at Shell gas stations.
The music artist said he received an influx of messages from friends and fans on his Live Nation spotlight video displayed at Shell gas stations. “It was just like wildfire after that,” said Becton.
According to Becton, within two months Becton’s Spotify listenership nearly tripled, his followership on the platform is now over 255,000.
From small screens to big screens
GSTV also highlighted a partnership with film company MGM Studios, where the company used GSTV’s in-house content studio, Ignite, to create content campaigns for its films.
According to GSTV executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Steve Ochs, after MGM’s video takeover campaign to promote The Addams Family 2, MGM tapped GSTV again in February for its Channing Tatum featured film, Dog.
MGM Studio chief marketing officer, Stephen Bruno, noted the current difficulty of encouraging viewers to go to the movies, but GSTV’s method of unexpected creative—plus the time and place—”helped MGM break through the clutter,” said Bruno.
Insider: A gas station video platform that works with brands like PepsiCo and Heineken is trying to grab retail media dollars — here's its pitch to advertisers
by Patrick Coffee, Insider
GSTV has repositioned itself as a complement to big retail ad platforms like Amazon and Walmart.
The company places ads for the likes of PepsiCo and Coca-Cola at gas stations and has been growing in the pandemic.
Its new pitch deck focuses on how its ads can drive sales at convenience stores and big-box chains.
Scores of retailers and other sorts of companies have jumped into digital advertising to chase some of the $31 billion in ad revenue that Amazon pulled in last year.
GSTV, or Gas Station TV, is a digital video network that places ads for the likes of PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Heineken, Mars Wrigley, and Johnson & Johnson at more than 28,000 gas stations. As retail media attracts billions from brands and investors, the company is pitching a new ad product called Amplify that connects ad spending to retail sales.
Rockbridge Growth Equity-backed GSTV works with franchisee-owned locations of convenience store chains like 7-Eleven and BP, which lack the scale and resources of giants like Walmart and Target. So GSTV has begun representing them collectively in negotiations with advertisers, ad agencies, tech, and retail companies, GSTV CEO Sean McCaffrey said.
With retail media heating up, GSTV is pitching itself to advertisers that already spend with bigger players like Amazon, Walmart, and Instacart.
GSTV grew revenue at a double-digit rate in 2021 and hired Kristal Walton, a former marketer for SC Johnson and Sam's Club, to build on that growth by focusing on targeting and measurement capabilities as well as the platform's proximity to big retailers, said McCaffrey.
"We reach 40% of US adults as they are spending money and likely to spend more," McCaffrey said. "We show them the last TV ad they see before they walk into retail doors."
McCaffrey said the company avoids data privacy issues by letting its retail partners handle their own first-party consumer data for advertisers.
Below is GSTV's latest deck, which it's using to pitch a variety of companies.
GSTV is using the Amplify launch to position itself as an alternative retail platform.
GSTV claims to have a larger US footprint than McDonald's and Starbucks combined.
It cites Comscore research showing consumers pay more attention to ads at the gas station display than on CTV.
GSTV says it can help advertisers boost sales at gas station convenience stores and nearby retailers.
GSTV partners with thousands of franchisees that can provide brands with their own first-party consumer data.
GSTV claims to be the only platform that lets advertisers reach consumers right before they enter a store.
GSTV says it works closely with CPG brands.
A key part of GSTV's pitch is data showing that people tend to combine gas station visits with shopping at other retail locations.
CEO Sean McCaffrey said the platform is in talks with big-box retailers to combine their data and advertising products in a package deal for brands and buyers.
GSTV says it can offer advertisers proximity to major retailers.
GSTV claims to deliver bigger returns for advertisers than other retailer platforms.
A big part of GSTV's new pitch involves partnerships with analytics companies including IRi and Catalina that help brands measure campaign results.
GSTV claims its new analytics offerings can measure things like units sold.
MediaPost: Pumping Sales: Q&A With GSTV's Sean McCaffrey
by Todd Wasserman, MediaPost
Now that the amount of time people spend in front of the television has been declining over the past decade, traditional TV is no longer the sure thing it used to be for getting in front of viewers.
One alternative is GSTV, a network of programming at the gas pumps. GSTV claims an audience of 104 million monthly unique viewers. For three to five minutes, GSTV gets access to consumers while they have not much else to do but pump their gas.
Since launching in 2005, GSTV has expanded to 25,000 locations at 7-Eleven, BP, Chevron and Gulf, among others. GSTV viewing has also soared during the pandemic, as PepsiCo and other major advertisers came on board.
We spoke with Sean McCaffrey, president and CEO of GSTV, about the network. Below are some excerpts from that conversation.
Marketing Daily: Do you have stats on how many people pay attention to GSTV? I assume it comes on when they start pumping, but how do you know they’re not looking away or listening to their own devices?
Sean McCaffrey: We take the time we have with our viewers while they are fueling up very seriously. In those three to five minutes, we want to supply our viewers with an entertaining and informative respite in their day, and the content experience that we’ve programmed reflects this.
From our 2021 Audience Insights study, we know that 89% of consumers watch and listen to GSTV. That amounts to 104 million unique viewers each month giving GSTV their 1:1 attention, or 2.5x more attentive to ads on GSTV than ads on linear TV, and 3.2x more attentive to ads on connected TV.
Marketing Daily: What are the products that you find get the best pickup when advertised on GSTV? What are some opportunities you see that are so far unexploited?
Sean McCaffrey: We work with advertisers across a wide array of categories, some that one would expect to see on GSTV, and some that may be more unexpected, but perform equally well. The success of our advertisers is leveraging GSTV to capture consumers who are not just fueling up, but out and about and in the mindset of making their next purchase decision for today’s lunch, this afternoon’s activity, tonight’s show to watch, next month’s vacation, a new car this summer, and beyond.
Being steps away from convenience stores, packaged foods and bottled beverages make a lot of sense for GSTV. However, we also know that on the day that consumers are fueling up, they are often making other stops as well -- and GSTV is one of the last full sight, sound, and motion screens they are paying attention to in the last mile of their consumer journey.
Because of this, we’ve found success for CPG brands looking to drive purchase decisions across retail channels, whether it be grocery, drug, or big box. We also know that our viewers eat and drink a lot, so QSRs have found success partnering with GSTV.
Likewise, automotive (our viewers are drivers), entertainment, financial services and travel are also categories that are unexpected but have performed well on GSTV because our viewers are in the right mindset.
Every ad impression, for example, is also a payment transaction, so for a financial advertiser, say, it’s a highly contextual moment to talk to consumers about their relationship to their money, household budget, financial wellness, etc.
Marketing Daily: What do electric cars mean for the long-term prospects for GSTV?
Sean McCaffrey: Regardless of the type of fuel, we are in the business of following the consumer journey. We know that electric cars are on the rise, and we’re keeping pace with consumer adoption.
We’re a partner alongside those who are fueling the evolution of transportation -- retailers, auto OEMs, major energy companies. We all know this is a rapidly evolving industry and we look forward to what’s to come for the intersection of consumer transportation and media.
Our business has been growing over the past few years -- not only in the footprint of our network and size of our audience, but also in the variety of brands partnering with us and the success of delivering on outcomes -- and we will continue to innovate around reaching consumers at the right time, right place, and right moment.
Marketing Daily: Gas prices have spiked recently. Do you find that rising prices makes GSTV consumers less receptive to ads? Why or why not?
Sean McCaffrey: We have not found a connection between the price of fuel and a consumer’s receptivity towards what’s on the screens. Our content experience is designed to entertain and inform based on audience insights, and that does not fluctuate with changing consumer prices.
Marketing Daily: What about when someone walks into a convenience store/gas station that has GSTV? Are there reminders in-store? How do they work?
Sean McCaffrey: According to our Audience Insights study, 62% of fuelers visited the C-store on their most recent visit to the gas station. Our primary aim is to entertain, inform and connect with our audience of drivers filling up at the 28,000+ fuel retailers with GSTV screens across the U.S., and also to best serve the advertisers and retailers who partner with us.
We do this best by partnering with brands, agencies, and retailers to reach consumers at the right time, right place, and right moment -- and in that right mindset -- about their next stop post-fuel-up. We work with our fuel retailer partners to use messaging that shares their latest promotions on our screens to drive customers into the C-store, and we work with brands to direct consumers with creative best practices and calls-to-action relevant to their campaigns.
TV advertisers are warning they'll shift spending elsewhere if prices get too high, and streaming video and audio could be the big winners
Television ad buyers and sellers are readying themselves for a transformational TV upfront.
Ratings are down, but TV ad prices are expected to increase by double digits.
Advertisers plan to shift dollars to streaming video and audio if prices get too high.
After a year that's been compared to the Great Depression, TV advertising is expected to rebound to a 9.3% increase in 2021, GroupM forecast in March.
But the numbers mask another reality. With ratings declining, marketers are sucking money out of linear TV. Of the TV buyers who are already putting their money into connected TV, 73 percent said their budget was coming from linear TV, according to an Interactive Advertising Bureau report.
And with the cost of a CPM (cost per one thousand viewers) expected to increase by double digits at this year's upfront, TV networks' annual pitch to advertisers, some advertisers are ready to move dollars to digital video and audio.
"We can shift significant money; we are not at the mercy of ridiculous rates of change," warned one ad buyer. "Media partners are going to try to milk their traditional business for as much as they can get."
TV ratings keep falling, but prices are rising
People continue to trade pay-TV packages for non-ad supported services like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney+ and HBOMax, and ad-supported streaming ones where the ad inventory is far smaller than that of traditional TV.
Bernstein's Todd Juenger reported this week that broadcast primetime viewing fell 22 percent among 18-49 year olds in the third week of April versus a year ago. Meanwhile, digital video viewing leapt 25.4 percent to 133 minutes per day, per eMarketer.
Separately, broadcast network scatter pricing, an indicator of upfront pricing to come, is running 27 percent higher than upfront rates paid last year, according to a Standard Media Index report for MediaPost.
Advertisers are left with fewer linear TV viewers, but even as they're eager to spend to capture what is being termed "COVID revenge spending," it's unclear how much they're willing to pay to reach them.
"It's transformational," said Sean McCaffrey, CEO at national video network GSTV. "Last year slayed the sacred cows of the industry: How it's done; how it's transacted; impressions, distribution, production. Never have all the advertisers and all ad agencies at the same time thought about re-arbitraging value and where they invest. They're all considering the shift into the next normal."
Traditional TV is getting too pricey for some advertisers
Some advertisers are already looking to spread their dollars elsewhere if TV ad prices get too rich.
"Linear ratings are declining, pricing is going up, and inventory is getting tighter and tighter," said Katie Haniffy, PepsiCo.'s head of media. "So I think strategically, we'll place a couple of big bets in the places we want to play and then we'll try to build a holistic media strategy across the board and be more inclusive of other channels because audiences are reachable elsewhere."
Geoff Calabrese, chief investment officer at Omnicom Media Group, North America, said: "Clients are preparing themselves for a different marketplace. It's all about ROI, and if we need to expand the aperture beyond the largest partners, we will. The biggest thing you're going to see is partners wanting less linear and more streaming because that's where consumption is going and that's where sales models have moved."
If the price to value equation gets too out of whack, one agency buyer said they'd shift dollars to audio, where players such as iHeart, Spotify and Pandora, are ready to catch the ball.
"Maybe there are different channels where we can shift significant money and find audiences so we are not at the mercy of ridiculous rates of change where the media companies have acknowledged they are going to try to milk their traditional business for as much as they can get because demand is through the roof," the buyer said.
Meanwhile, at the IAB NewFronts this week, digital video purveyors from magazine companies to TV set makers rolled out their attempts to grab linear TV dollars.
Two broadcast network owners, Fox and NBCUniversal, are playing in both sandboxes, pitching their streaming ventures. On a call with investors on Wednesday, for example, Fox chief executive Lachlan Murdoch spent a sizable portion of the time discussing just how big Tubi is. "We are deeply integrating Tubi into this year's upfront discussions," Murdoch said. "Tubi represented 275 million hours of total view time streamed in March, a monthly record for the platform. We also set a record for total view time in the third quarter, with 800 million hours streamed, up more than 50 percent year-over-year."
TV buyers will come to the Upfront with digital video numbers and more buying options fresh in their memories.
In last year's upfront, when the pandemic wreaked havoc on advertising plans, networks let buyers cancel their buys on a much shorter schedule than normal. Buy-side executives want flexibility to be the buzzword of 2021, too. Networks that typically require a month to 45 days notice for cancellations will have a hard time competing with connected device Roku, which is letting clients cancel 100% of their commitments on two days' notice.
Are network owners fueling their own demise?
Big media companies might argue their record-breaking, multi-billion dollar outlays to the NFL in March is a sign they are still investing to amass big audiences. But network TV, once the ultimate gatekeeper of premium TV, is now competing in an ever-expanding universe of streaming channels awash with the bottomless archives of the Hollywood studios.
Ad dollars that used to fund original programming on network TV are now funding their streaming initiatives, whose viewers are younger than network TVs, further degrading network TV viewing and boosting pricing.
"It's not like the media companies are investing in new content to get the ratings to return to traditional linear," said one agency TV buyer. "They have given up on that. Yet they want clients to pay these incredible rates for access to that inventory, and they're using current investments in data, tech and media to fund their future DTC streaming business."
If there's a saving grace for TV, digital video sellers have their own issues, such as a smaller available ad inventory, high prices, and a lack of standardized measurement.
"The last year just accelerated existing trends, the shift from linear, the rise of connected TV," said GSTV's McCaffrey. "Digital has been the make-good for broadcast, but now that digital has its own challenges. It feeds into the narrative that brands are truly reconsidering everything. It's unlike any moment that I've ever seen."
The CTV ad measurement conundrum that creates more questions than answers
In a complex landscape that includes streaming platforms and connected devices – all of which have their own approaches to media buying and ad measurement – it’s harder than ever for marketers to get a solid grip on how their ads are performing on CTV. So, here’s what you need to know about the current state of ad measurement in CTV, and what’s to come.
Connected TV offers countless benefits to marketers. Ad targeting is made simpler since advertisers have access to data about users’ category preferences and the shows they watch. This enables them to serve relevant ads to target audiences based on this information. And, of course, viewers have been binging streaming content, so there’s no question that the audience is there.
But in the new high-definition world of content, ad measurement hasn’t yet come into full focus. With so many players in the mix – including connected devices from makers such as Roku, Apple TV and Chromecast, and an ever-expanding pool of streaming services with their own operating systems – it’s easy to see why measurement is no easy feat.
The challenges of accurate CTV ad measurement
The challenges of ad measurement in streaming stem primarily from the fragmentation of the ecosystem. Put another way: there’s no common currency.
While Nielsen’s framework worked seamlessly within the well-oiled machine of linear TV, there are no such accepted standards of measurement in CTV. “Traditional TV audience measurement methodologies, like Nielsen’s panel-based approach for linear TV, were designed for large audiences watching a relatively small universe of content in a world in which the content on the screen was a good indicator of the ad being served,” says Eric Sherman, executive vice president of insights and analytics at GSTV, a national video network rooted in gas station television. “In a sprawling, addressable, and highly-dynamic CTV ecosystem, that approach doesn’t give advertisers the insight they need into campaign performance.”
A key issue is the lack of common identifiers across the different CTV platforms. This further impedes standardization. CTV media buyers are clamoring for a universal, cross-platform identifier to make planning and measuring CTV campaigns easier.
Still, the central problem is that most streaming services have their own proprietary methods of measurement. And on top of these approaches are countless third-party vendors offering ad verification and measurement services. As a result, it’s increasingly difficult for advertisers to gain a clear and comprehensive picture of ad performance or to track metrics such as attribution.
“For advertisers and content creators using the established advertising-based video on-demand (AVOD) social platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, the measurement challenge is more about confidence in the data and access given to third-party measurement,” says Graham Swallow, head of data and insights at digital content agency Little Dot Studios. “We don’t know what YouTube defines as a ‘view’, and we don’t have any independent verification of the view data, nor even the simple ability to look at cross-platform reach or frequency.”
For video on-demand (VOD) companies – whether they are device manufacturers like Samsung and Vizio or streaming platforms like Roku – there is a similar lack of standardization. “Data collection is often a manual process, with each platform providing different levels of granularity and richness, without agreed definitions of metrics,” Swallow says. “Advertisers and agencies want ease and confidence that campaigns will deliver and numbers to back them up. There are opportunities in this space to solve these challenges.”
But it’s not just the variability in measurement standards that complicates things. “Proprietary approaches to measurement by the ‘big four’ (Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google) certainly contribute to the challenges advertisers face in painting a holistic picture of streaming ad performance. But fragmentation exists beyond just the hardware platforms,” says Sherman. “Buyers can transact across hundreds of different apps, aggregators, and publishers, further splintering audiences and complicating measurement.”
The fragmentation of the market makes it difficult to measure with accuracy. Tal Chalozin, the chief technology officer and co-founder of adtech company Innovid, says: “It’s impossible to really understand who the viewer is who’s actually watching – and if it’s the same viewer who is watching on two different devices or two apps on the same device, versus scores on multiple households or multiple people.” Due to this lack of clarity, metrics such as reach and frequency – simple, straightforward measurements on linear – become obfuscated on CTV. As a result, marketers can’t be confident that their ad dollars aren’t going to waste.
Beyond the complete lack of common frameworks, ad measurement in CTV is challenging for more obvious reasons. Even with effective targeting, there’s no guarantee that consumers will watch an ad. They may get up to use the restroom, scroll another device or chat with their family members. Plus, if users are served ads from the same campaign across different channels, it can be nearly impossible to confidently measure multi-touch attribution – identifying what specific ads and what specific actions contribute to a given consumer behavior like converting.
Jason Fairchild, co-founder and chief exec at CTV platform tvScientific, agrees that this issue of divided consumer attention impacts marketers’ ability to measure attribution with accuracy. “We live in a world where the last click from search or social claims all of the attribution credit, but we’re seeing a different truth emerge as CTV advertising is scaling up,” he says. “Users see a CTV ad and respond via a second screen. This ‘second screen behavior’ often leads to a search, but it was not caused or inspired by the search – the search was inspired by the CTV ad.”
In search of a solution
To industry players, it’s clear that things need to change in more than one way. Many believe the solution is making CTV look more like digital advertising. “With the majority of TV viewing happening on streaming services versus linear, we don’t need to retrofit the new era of TV with a panel-based measurement model from the 1950s,” says Fairchild. “I think the new era of TV measurement will be very similar to search and social, where we can leverage sophisticated digital targeting on a one-to-one basis and measure actual outcomes instead of outcome proxies like delivery of reach and frequency against target demos.”
The sentiment is one echoed across the industry. And it’s the reason for a recently announced strategic alliance between Roku and Nielsen. Announced in March, the deal brings automatic content recognition (ACR), a real-time ad detection technology, and dynamic ad insertion (DAI), the ability to serve relevant ads to targeted audiences in real time, to streaming on Roku. The device maker says that, using Nielsen’s frameworks, ad performance and measurement will enable smarter, live buying and give marketers opportunities to monetize audiences in new ways beyond basic demographic information.
Louqman Parampath, the vice-president of advertising product management at Roku, explains that this new partnership builds upon a long history of the two working together to improve ad measurement. “Very early on, we integrated with Nielsen for what is known as dollar measurement, which equates to digital ad ratings. This is to say that for every campaign that you buy from Roku, we can tell you the age and gender bucket in which audiences who got exposed to that campaign fell.”
Roku continued to work with Nielsen to replicate Nielsen’s gross rating points measurement on CTV. Amazon and Hulu quickly followed suit, adopting a similar approach. In order to maintain a competitive edge, Roku felt it had to go further. “There are other kinds of questions that need to play out here, such as incremental reach,” says Parampath. ”If you buy across multiple platforms, how can you actually duplicate between users who saw on Hulu and also on Roku and also on Amazon Fire and so on? That is where a more broad currency is possible.”
This currency could come in the form of a unified identifier, which would enable marketers to more seamlessly share data and work across different platforms within the ecosystem.
Innovid’s Chalozin, like Parampath, sees a growing demand for a universal identifier in CTV. However, unlike some who says the ‘big four’ will continue to duke it out, Chalozin believes that it could be a real possibility. “[The industry] will create a unified identifier that will allow us [greater access to user data],” he says. He claims that the establishment of a universal identifier will reduce the fragmentation of the ecosystem and enable marketers to better calculate the value of impressions. “It’s in the best interests of almost everyone in the industry.”
Chalozin readily admits that any viable universal ID solution for CTV will need to be extremely privacy-centric. Today, 84% of Americans feel they have little to no control over the data that companies or the government collects about them, according to a Pew Research study. Combine this distrust with the aggressive shifts toward increased data privacy in the tech and legislative arenas, and it’s obvious that any CTV solution will need to stay the same course.
Little Dot Studios’ Swallow agrees that privacy needs to remain top-of-mind. However, unlike many other industry players, he says that giving marketers access to more granular and more accurate data is not necessarily an inherent good or a problem that even needs solving. “Yes, an entire industry has developed off the back of what has been termed ‘surveillance capitalism’, but that doesn’t mean we must be on an inexorable path to more granularity. Globally regulators are putting the brakes on this through the likes of GDPR and CCPA.”
Even so, Swallow says there is need for standardization. “For basic and anonymous measurement, there needs to be an independent standard with an agreed methodology. It happened at the birth of advertising on the web, where first-party ad serving gradually disappeared and was replaced by audited measurement and ad-serving tools. CTV and streaming need the same to give confidence to the market on the reliability and veracity of numbers.”
For many marketers, accuracy and granularity will remain top priorities. Chief among their concerns remains multi-touch attribution – and, more generally, simply understanding where consumers’ eyes are and when. Solving these challenges will require that key players develop more effective cross-media measurement capabilities.
According to Kimberly Gilberti, the senior vice-president of product management at Nielsen, the marketing research firm is working to ensure that “computation is being done in a way that is truly comparable” across channels. “For example, television today is measured on the average minute basis, whereas digital is measured sub-minute,” she says. “So even though you can put TV data and digital data together, their underlying data collection and their underlying calculations are actually very different. They are being put together in ways that are not truly comparable. And that’s really our mission with Nielsen One: to put these numbers together in a way that they are as ‘apples to apples’ as we can make them.”
Parampath says that this is one of the key focus areas of the Roku-Nielsen deal. “We’re working to measure reach across multiple streams – it could be linear, it could be connected TV, it could be a desktop and it could be mobile. As a user, you could get exposed to the same Pepsi campaign across all those channels on your mobile app, on your computer, when you watch traditional TV through cable or a set-top box, or when you’re watching connected TV. But as it stands, you don’t actually get credit for reaching the same person across those different channels.
“You want to be able to actually say that you got incrementally new users on these channels that you did not get on some other channels.” He says this is the central objective of cross-media measurement.
Ultimately, CTV needs to see unification of some sort. Without some agreed-upon frameworks or standardized currency, the ecosystem will continue to splinter, making ad measurement ever more uncertain. Across the industry, initiatives that seek to standardize data-sharing with qualified measurement partners are under way. And outside of one-to-one partnerships such as the Roku-Nielsen deal, major industry groups such as the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) are working to enable cross-platform measurement, which could give marketers greater, more accurate visibility into metrics like reach and frequency across channels.
But how we shift the paradigm is a bigger question. Advertisers are sure to benefit from greater cooperation and shared methodologies – it’s critical that the right economic incentives are in place to help stimulate this unification.