CANNES — The new-wave TV ad measurement provider co-founded by actor Edward Norton has taken an $80 million investment designed to expand its sales and marketing operations.

EDO, which aims to correlate audience outcomes to ad exposure, took its biggest investment round to date.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Kevin Krim, president, EDO, explains why.

Old game is over

“Measurement is pivotal to a $90 billion US television industry,” Krim says.

“We’re the only company focused on real-time syndicated behavioural outcome measurement.”

Krim said measurement was the number-one topic on lips at Cannes Lions, because everyone knows the “old system” of measurement is “over”.

Join the dots

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 idea goes, the larger the spike, the more consumers are engaging with the brand – 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.

Capital-efficient

“We’d only raised less than $18 million up until that, so we’ve been a very capital-efficient model,” Krim says. “The markets have moved and capital-intensive businesses are getting punished in this world of rising interest rates.

“We raised the kind of capital we need to grow to keep investing in the R&D that we’re known for.

We also need to have a great go-to-market team that can sell to the thousand-plus national advertisers in their agencies and keep serving the sell side partners that we have great relationships with.

“You had the behemoths in this industry loaded with debt from private equity firms and not able to invest in the kind of innovation that this industry deserves.”

You are watching ‘The Mediaocean Retreat’, a Beet.TV Leadership Summit at Cannes Lions 2022.

For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

Beet.TV is an official partner of Cannes Lions.