Project led by media measurement veteran Caroline Horner will evaluate opportunities to improve use of Smart TV data for advertising and programming measurement
The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), the US-based collaboration of companies focused on promoting innovation and best practices in media measurement, metrics and data, today announced the launch of a study focused on assessing the opportunities that exist for enhancing the value of Smart TV data as an input to TV measurement solutions.
“Smart TV data, leveraging automatic content recognition (ACR) solutions, has become an increasingly important input to syndicated measurement offerings in the US,” said Jon Watts, Managing Director, CIMM. “Available from tens of millions of households, Smart TV data captures viewing behavior on a second-by-second basis, and can support both content and advertising measurement use cases. However, the ecosystem is fragmented with limited standardization, content identification reference libraries are rarely comprehensive, and measurement vendors have to determine how to deal with unidentified or unmatched fingerprints. Many industry participants believe that there are opportunities to address these issues and we’re excited to work with our members to assess the various options, bringing together networks and programmers, CTV OEMs, agencies, measurement providers and other industry participants in a truly collaborative and inclusive undertaking.”
This study is the first major initiative in recent years to explore the opportunities for the industry to improve Smart TV data. Working with CIMM’s Coalition of members from across the entire ecosystem, the study will identify and assess a range of practical initiatives that have the potential to improve the use of Smart TV data for advertising and programming measurement purposes, including open watermarking solutions and metadata standardization.
The initiative will be led by industry measurement veteran Caroline Horner and will be supported three expert advisors – Jonathan Steuer, Anonymous Media Research; Bill Harvey; and Tom Morgan, MediaD.tv – and a Project Steering Group from CIMM’s membership, including: Howard Shimmel, Janus Strategy & Insights; Brian West, NBCUniversal Media; Helen Katz, Publicis Media; and Albert Lau, Omnicom Media Group.
“With the increase in video app usage and addressable advertising inventory, data from Smart TVs is becoming an important indicator of content consumption and ad effectiveness,” said Horner. “If we can work to keep these dataflows as pure, complete and accessible as possible, the ecosystem can better quantify video consumption across linear and digital applications. It is the perfect time to consider practical steps that the industry can take to make the data more comprehensive, accurate, representative, interoperable and cost-effective.”
“As our industry works to improve cross-platform video measurement, the CIMM Smart(er) TV Data Study will offer valuable insight into ways we can further enhance data collection, measurement and reporting of both ads and content from today’s consumers,” said Helen Katz EVP, Research, Publicis Media.
“Smart TV data is a crucial ingredient in measurement – today, and into the future,” said Brian West, SVP, Data & Measurement Strategy at NBCUniversal. “As utilization of this data for content and ad measurement grows, we must work together toward increased adoption and interoperability. This project presents an exciting opportunity for the industry to collaborate and innovate on making Smart TV data more complete, more cross platform, and more valuable.”
To learn more about the study or to get involved, contact info@cimm-us.org.
About CIMM
The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) is comprised of leading TV and video content providers, media buying agencies, large advertisers, pay TV distributors, research and media technology vendors and consultants that aim to promote improvements, best practices and innovations measurement, metrics and data across the media and advertising ecosystem. CIMM is a division of the ARF (Advertising Research Foundation), which aims to further, through research, the scientific practice of advertising and marketing.
CIMM is currently working across a diverse range of projects, including initiatives focused on measurement, Smart TV data, data privacy, streaming, clean rooms, and other areas.
