The idea of buying social media ads to coincide with TV shows has become commonplace. But how should the industry price such ads? Using the shows as a barometer, suggests technology vendor Civolution.

“We predict the popularity of a TV show during which a certain TV ad will run,” company global product manager Stefan Maris tells Beet.TV.

Civolution’s underlying watermarking technology can already recognize the ads in TV broadcasts. Connecting the dots is a simple matter of plugging that information in to a demand-side ad platform.

“We proivde a trigger to our DSP and ad-buying partners that allows them to make a decision in real-time,” Maris says, calling the setup “predictive GRP”, after the gross rating point system used by TV ad buyers to measure TV ad exposure.

We interviewed Maris at Beet.TV’s annual executive retreat in Vieques, Puerto Rico.