Getting Granular: Why ACR Data Is Winning The TV Measurement Game
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Imagine, if you will, that you are a senior brand manager at a large advertiser trying to justify your $300 million ad spend to the CEO.
On the one hand, you’ve got a bunch of charts from Google and Facebook showing exactly who saw your digital display and mobile ads, when, where and what they did next. The charts even show whether those users have bought something from you before, whether they’ve visited your website, their recent purchase patterns in your category, even the local weather at the time they saw your ad.
On the other hand, you’ve got a bunch of charts from the TV networks showing off estimated audiences based on a sampling of around 40,000 people, that never get more granular than age and gender. When the CEO asks if you can be sure those people actually saw your ads you have to admit that no, TV programming is measured in 15-minute increments and so there’s really no way to know for sure.
Hence the need to find a way to better measure TV in order to staunch the flow of ad dollars to digital.
Until recently, set top box data from the various MVPDs was widely considered the ideal alternative or companion to both ACR data and Nielsen’s panels
But as we learned in our latest special report, Getting Granular. Why ACR Data Is Winning The TV Measurement Game, the current industry consensus is that MVPDs are beginning the process of sunsetting their set top boxes (and the set top box data that comes with them) and ACR data from smart TVs will (eventually) reign supreme.
This is a plus for the TV industry, since ACR data has several inherent advantages over set top box data.
To begin with, it measures everything that is “on the glass.” Meaning both streaming and linear, which is how most people watch TV today and how they will continue to watch TV for the remainder of the decade and quite likely the following decades too.
ACR data is collected on a second-by-second basis. So no more guesswork around who actually tuned in for the ad block and who actually watched the ad.
Finally, it’s digital, which means that TV providers can now offer the same level of granularity in their measurement as Google and Facebook.
Which, of course, helps all those brand managers to justify their increased television spend.
You’ll find details about all this and more in our new report, which focuses in on the three big U.S. smart TV OEMs, LG, Samsung and VIZIO, companies that own their own hardware, software and FAST platforms, to look at how they provide ACR data, how they use it to help programmers and advertisers on their own platforms for everything from frequency capping to incremental reach, and what they see happening in 2022.
In addition, you'll find TVREV’s own predictions about the future of ACR and what you should be looking out for in order to stay ahead of the game.
All that, plus exclusive in-depth interviews with executives from VIZIO, Samsung and LG.
Download the paper today for free and see for yourself.
PS: Be sure to get the first paper in the series, The Emerging Smart TV Ecosystem.
