Data Plus Math, the research company behind what was called Project Thor, designed to create a standardized measurement of the impact of TV advertising, has formed a strategic relationship to get smart TV viewing information from Inscape, the data division of Vizio.
Led by the Video Advertising Bureau, dozens of TV companies met with Data Plus Math in October to find out about its attribution platform, which lets clients know how much TV advertising exposures are powering their marketing efforts.
Related: Networks Plan Q1 Test of Data Plus Math Ad Attribution Platform
After the meeting, a handful of broadcast and cable network owners to test Data Plus Math’s attribution platform. Those companies include A&E Networks, AMC Networks, The CW, Discovery Communications and Fox News.
The Project Thor codename, used to arrange the meeting, has largely been dropped.
The data from Inscape will enable Data Plus Math to help TV networks, distributors, agencies and clients to better understand and properly attribute the lift that results from each advertising exposure, the companies said.
“TV is massively under-credited as a driver of consumer activity. Using Inscape’s screen-based behavioral data, we can better quantify the power of TV advertising to drive consumers from initial product awareness down the marketing funnel to an eventual purchase. The data shows that TV advertising is doing a lot of the heavy-lifting for marketers and that last-touch digital advertisements are all too often getting too much credit.” said John Hoctor, CEO at Data Plus Math who was previously the co-founder of Integral Reach, the first audience based sell-side platform for TV.
Inscape gets data from 7.7 million Vizio TV in the U.S. The automated content recognition (ACR) data is used by other research companies including iSpot.TV, which recently signed a long term deal with Inscape.
“While the market is moving towards broad adoption of ACR, there is still a sizeable learning curve when it comes to maximum utilization of the data,” said Jodie McAfee, senior VP of Sales and Marketing at Inscape. “And there is a short list of companies in a position to onboard the data, execute against it and shepherd the industry forward. The veterans at Data Plus Math are on that list.”
