When Paramount Global sells commercials in this year’s “upfront” ad market, the media won’t only be guaranteeing the size of viewership for different shows. It may be in a position to do deals based on the audience’s tangible response to particular commercials they have seen.
The owner of CBS and Comedy Central will utilize a new product from media-measurement company iSpot that aims to deliver information about so-called business outcomes, or whether consumers react in specific ways to seeing commercials, such as ordering a product or buying a movie ticket. The iSpot offering, called “Outcomes at Scale,” gives advertisers access to “conversion-rate tracking that enables them to see which programs, day parts and audience segments generate the best response to ad campaigns.”
Examining consumer response to commercials, also known as “attribution,” is seen as critical. As the linear TV audience has dispersed among streaming video and many other methods of consumption, the industry is struggling to count viewers in a way advertisers will support. Despite the rise of mobile tablets and streaming video, most TV networks continue to derive a significant amount of ad revenue based on the number of linear viewers their TV shows attract. Linking ad exposure to a purchase or response could give TV networks reason to seek premiums from sponsors.
“The ability to deliver automated outcomes seamlessly across platforms is incredibly transformative,” says Travis Scoles, executive vice president of advanced advertising at Paramount, in a statement. “While traditional metrics like GRPs remain important, they often serve as proxies for impact. Delivering proof of performance at scale is the roadmap for the future of the industry.”
Advertisers can use the iSpot product to examine how audience impressions line up against key sales performance metrics, such as visits to stores or websites and more
“Offering attribution at scale doesn’t just speed up the time to critical insight for brands and enable better in-flight optimizations, it can change the buying process from a conversation about reach to one about impact,” says Stu Schwartzapfel, executive vice president of media at iSpot, in a statement. “Now, instead of waking up and checking how campaigns are pacing for on-target reach, buyers can see how investments are performing as campaigns progress and allocate dollars on what’s working.”
Paramount has experience working with new measurement vendors. The company tapped another upstart, VideoAmp, to provide audience measurement during a months-long contract dispute with Nielsen, the dominant player in the space. The two companies resolved their differences in February, meaning that Paramount will use Nielsen measures to a solid extend during the coming upfront market, when U.S. TV networks try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory.
