ISpot Gains National Currency Certification, Which Could Boost Its Place In The Measurement Race

The TV industry is still desperately trying to bring order to measurement.

The latest step toward order occurred on Tuesday, when the broadcaster-backed joint industry committee (JIC) certified iSpot as a national currency. The certification followed hundreds of tests to evaluate the stability, accuracy and transparency of its data. The JIC already certified Nielsen’s other competitors – VideoAmp and ComScore – in April.

But these certifications aren’t exactly alike.

The committee came to its decision after gathering feedback from JIC members about whether they’d feel comfortable using the data, Brittany Slattery, CMO of OpenAP, the data activation platform behind the JIC, told AdExchanger. Members include both buyers and sellers, such as Paramount, NBCUniversal, Samsung, Dentsu, GroupM and Omnicom.

In iSpot’s case, members said they’d theoretically be okay using personified data for ad transactions, Slattery said, referring to cross-platform age and gender demos. That paved the way for iSpot’s certification.

ISpot is the first TV ad currency ready for transactions against personified demos, in addition to households and advanced audience segments, according to the JIC.

In contrast, Comscore and VideoAmp are recommended for household and advanced audience measurement, but were found “not yet transactional at scale on personified demos,” according to a JIC statement.

The TV currency race is heating up

When the JIC certified Comscore and VideoAmp in April, the 4A’s measurement committee warned it was still too soon to use non-Nielsen currencies for demo-based buying. While these newer currencies provide demo measurement based on aggregated impressions, buyers need individual – not just aggregated – demo data to make sense of ad performance across linear TV, streaming and other channels.

Cross-platform demos is where iSpot is carving its competitive edge.

The majority of linear TV ad dollars are still spent based on age and gender demos. But buyers still need a platform that can measure deduplicated reach and frequency of those demos across channels, iSpot CEO Sean Muller told AdExchanger. Buyers can make better decisions about how to allocate budgets across linear and streaming if they know basic demographic information about the household members they’re reaching, Muller said. Which is where iSpot’s personified demo measurement comes in.

But Muller attests that iSpot is better equipped for personified demo measurement compared to Comscore and VideoAmp.

Muller said one differentiator for iSpot is that it avoids “weighting” its data sources to make it census-representative. Weighting data makes it much more difficult to consistently assign impressions to individual people or households, he said.

The JIC, of course, must take a neutral stance.

Although publisher and agency members recommend use cases for certified currencies, the JIC itself does not recommend any one currency provider over another. That being said, providers are able to resubmit their data for review by the JIC, which would then update its report highlighting the committee’s recommendations.

The JIC’s stream dream

As a fully certified currency, iSpot will get access to the streaming data service the JIC is launching next year. The streaming data product will provide currencies with first-party data from both publishers and agencies within the JIC for consistent measurement.

“Multiple publishers, including Paramount, have already put their first-party data inside the framework,” said Travis Scoles, the network’s EVP of advanced advertising. The goal, Scoles said, is ultimately to help buyers measure and compare campaign performance across publishers, rather than having to treat TV programmers like “individual walled gardens.”

Still, the streaming data service will have pretty severe gaps if the JIC’s membership stays as is. Major programmers and digital behemoths like Disney, Netflix and Prime Video are all notably absent from the JIC. And this absence will severely limit a data product meant to provide cross-platform measurement.

But the JIC says its membership is growing.

“We expect more and more publishers to join as time goes on,” Scoles said, because the JIC also serves as a valuable forum for publishers to hear buyer needs firsthand and share feedback with measurement providers directly.

In the meantime, however, buyers and sellers must forge ahead with the long-awaited changes in TV measurement and currency.

Story updated 8/13 to reflect changes to how the JIC gathers and uses feedback from members.