When TV metadata company Rovi acquired set-top box software outfit TiVo for $1.1bn last year, it may have seemed like the smaller, younger whipper-snapper buying up the experienced, legacy players.
But now the pair have been rolling together their data and products in to a suite greater than the sum of their parts – and more is yet to come.
“We are launching a new offering, beginning January 1st, taking some of the former assets from Rovi and TiVo, bringing them together into a robust new offering,” says Walt Hortsman, SVP of advertising and analytics at the new-look TiVo, int his video interview with Beet.TV.
“The software stack we have had in market now for a number of years, and (we) are actively deploying that more broadly in the ecosystem.”
But TiVo and Rovi have already been gluing their magic together since the 2016 deal.
TiVo’s viewership data, merged with Rovi’s analytics tools, will enable better targeting of media spend for marketers and improved advertising inventory yield for media sellers.
TiVo generates reports containing indices showing how programs rank for certain target audiences.
“We have used our relationships with all of our cable operators, both from the TiVo side and from the Rovi side, to amass a robust pool of set-top box data,” Horstman adds. “It’s the foundation of everything that we’re doing in the advanced media and advertising space.
“We’re ingesting it into a canonicalized platform. It’s cleansed, it’s matched to an Experian or an Acxiom ID, and we can match it deterministically to first- and third-party data.
“We now have got robust, deterministic TV viewership data where we can really bring science to understanding how to make TV better.”
Horstman will be a featured speaking at the Beet Retreat in Miami next month.
This interview was recorded at the TV Data Deep Dive with Alphonso, presented by The Drum, during Advertising Week in New York City.
