SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – In a further sign the media landscape is evolving to help advertisers understand the actions TV viewers take after ad exposure, EDO Inc, a provider of such data is raising an $80 million funding round.
The new money comes from LA media investor Shamrock Capital, following an earlier $12 million Series A round.
It is EDO’s second piece of news this week, after Discovery Inc announced EDO as preferred partner for measuring audience behavior.
In this video interview with Beet.TV at Beet Retreat San Juan, Scott Grunther, general manager and head of revenue for TV products at EDO, explains why the company is moving up the ad funnel.
Capturing behavior
“EDO is a data and analytics company that measures the effectiveness of advertising on television, across platforms, by capturing the immediate behavioral response to TV ads,” Grunther says.
“We have been focused on the middle of the funnel, trying to capture the moment when viewers go from being passive to active with brands.
“Our focus has been on what are the behaviors that are capturable that are most indicative of engagement and intent and for us, that’s really been a big focus on search.”
The company was c0-founded by actor Edward Norton and Daniel Nadler, and is helmed at CEO by Kevin Krim, the former CNBC Digital executive.
Moving upstream
Grunther says EDO is used by U.S. TV networks’ ad sales, research and advanced advertising teams.
“The bread and butter is looking at post-buy performance,” he says. “(When) a campaign runs on TV, our data is being used to help validate performance, improve performance, for the sales teams to go back to the brands and the agencies to highlight how things perform in their environment versus the competitors.”
But Grunther says it’s increasingly about “moving the data further upstream”, meaning EDO wants ad buyers to leverage its data set to do advance planning, not just post-exposure analysis.
The company recently announced Spanish-language broadcaster Univision will get to tell its advertisers the likely success of particular inventory moments, after partnering with EDO and datafuelX – essentially predicting the future success of its inventory for particular advertisers.
Sorry to still be harping on the Super Bowl in March, but uhhh, @MarketingBrew got some cool new custom search data from @edo_data that indicates how brands performed against the celebrities who starred in their ads: https://t.co/UYX8YQghRe
— Alyssa Meyers (@ameyers_) March 8, 2022
Mobile intention
EDO’s convergent TV analytics platform is called Ad EnGage Convergent. The company has other insight and intelligence offerings, including for analysis of movie-goers’ box office engagement.
EDO says its technology “measures the spike in consumer engagement behaviors, such as online search, for a brand in the moments after a TV ad airs – the larger the spike, the more consumers are engaging with the brand, and higher engagement is predictive of higher sales”.
EDO makes its predictions by correlating search and brand website visitation against ad airing data for every 30- and 15-second spot running across more than 120 broadcast and cable networks plus major AVOD platforms in the US.
As Grunther puts it: “It’s picking up your phone, your tablet, and Googling it. We firmly believe that people are doing that because they’re engaged, they’re interested, they’re curious, and they intend to do something.”
You are watching coverage from Beet Retreat San Juan 2022, presented by AppScience, Infillion, MadHive, SpringServe, Univision & VideoAmp. For more videos, please visit this page.
