Measuring US TV consumption for advertisers used to be so simple. With Nielsen, there was really only one game in town.

With on-demand and the proliferation of multiple streaming platforms, that hegemony is under attack. This is the year when multiple TV MVPDs are trying out a range of new measurement provider.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Nicolle Pangis, CEO, Ampersand, says the industry needs to be ready to accommodate the multi-currency future.

Multiple standards

Whilst that is the way the wind is blowing, some in an industry already replete with fragmentation may also be suspicious of even more multiplicity.

“I do think the world of television of the future will not have one measurement standard,” Pangis says.

“The reason I think that is, in the world of digital for example, there’s no such thing as one standard of measurement or one company that owns measurement.

“In fact, there’s multiple companies that verify the delivery of audience or inventory delivered.

“And so, as the world moves to more and more addressable and digital delivery … we’re going to be talking more about verification of audiences delivered by companies and by ad servers and less about one measurement standard per se.”

Altice + Ampersand

Pangis was speaking after Ampersand announced an extension of its Altice USA partnership. Ampersand will become the exclusive seller of Altice’s national addressable inventory and will also integrate aggregated set-top box data insights from two million Altice into its AND platform.

For Pangis, it’s another expansion into the national addressable marketplace.

“We started with the inventory of Comcast, Cox, and Charter.,” she says. “In May of 2020, we added Verizon and just announced this week Altice, bringing us to 52 million households in the national addressable space.

“And we also on-boarded the set-top box insights of Altice to make the AND platform up to 42 million households of set-top box data insights that brands can use to plan by and measure their multi-screen television investments.

“We’re very excited because we know that in order to simplify a very complicated marketplace in television, it’s important for brands and agencies to be able to access authenticated inventory that is safe and fraud-free.”

Ampersand’s increments

Ampersand is the former NCC Media, a cable TV ads integrator owned by three US cable operators.

Now reconstituted as “the total TV company”, its platform helps advertisers define and find audiences, plan and execute ad schedules, and measure and report their outcomes.

The outfit boasts viewership insights and planning on more than 40 million households, in every DMA, across more than 150 networks and in all dayparts.

It is owned by Comcast, Spectrum and Cox, as well as Verizon and other MVPDs, but also now is the exclusive seller of Verizon Fios’ addressable ad space.

Less TV waste

Pangis sets out the vision a vision for addressable TV as powering less waste

She says: “We’re trying to sort of bring together this notion of local television that we’ve historically been in (and) the national spot television business, and overlay the ability to target a national audience and bring insights to the buy side to better optimise their TV investments.

“The whole premise is to waste less dollars on audiences that might not ever be interested in a particular product or service.

“For example, if you have a store that you want to target an audience against, you can target that specific geography, as opposed to the nation, if you only are going to sell a product and service in a specific place.”

You are watching “Advertising Transformation: What’s Next for Converged TV and Video,” a Beet.TV Virtual Leadership Summit presented by Mediaocean. For more videos, please visit this page.