In the last couple of years, the TV ad industry has been noting, kicking the tyres of and, ultimately, adopting non-traditional measurement and trading systems.
By and large, they purport to do a better job of quantifying and facilitating transactions for ads across multiple screens.
iSpot.tv is a major vendor in the space, with a growing number of major-publisher agreements.
In this video interview with Beet.TV at the 12th annual CIMM Summit, Stuart Schwartzapfel, EVP of Media Partnerships, iSpot.tv, provides an explanation of what this entails and how it differs from traditional measurement.
The Paramount Partnership
“We’ve been working with Paramount for about 10 years in a measurement capacity across the entire enterprise,” says Schwartzapfel.
He explains that their work with Paramount naturally progressed into the currency space about two years ago.
The focus, over the last 18 months, has been on data integration to get the currency-grade data into the right “pipes and plumbing” for Paramount to plan, pace, and provide post-campaign reporting and stewardship.
Currency vs Measurement
Such are the capabilities of emerging tools, it can often be hard to figure out what is a currency and what is a measurement.
When asked about the difference, Schwartzapfel clarifies, “most people would say that currency is narrowly defined as a metric by which the buy and the sell side agree to transact on”. It’s essentially a guarantee on a level of performance associated with audience delivery.
On the other hand, measurement, while tied to currency, is not a guarantee on performance but is more directional in nature. “It’s not used to guarantee a deal,” Schwartzapfel states. He believes there’s a big opportunity for measurement to more directly inform currency and vice versa.
Schwartzapfel sees the lines between currency and measurement blurring and predicts that verification rate could become an additional metric by which campaigns are guaranteed.
