COLOGNE — Imagine if advertisers and broadcasters could know, with certainty, which TV shows viewers were watching, for how long and how attentive they were?
That’s what companies like Samba TV are claiming to offer. Launched in 2008 and backed by investors including Mark Cuban, the outfit works by having software embedded on some 180m viewing devices.
“That consists of smart TVs, STBs, phones, tablets and PCs where we’re observing video consumption and ad exposure,” Samba TV CEO Ashwin Navin explains in this video interview with Beet.TV.
“About 15m of them are smart TVs. Our software is analzying every bit of video that’s being consumed … on a sub-second basis – whether it’s linear television, on-demand, over-the-top, game console usage. We can see pretty much everything.”
Once that data is available, what to do with it? Samba helps advertisers follow confirmed TV ad viewers to other screens, retargeting ads on mobile devices. “If someone visits an advertiser’s website after the TV ad exposure, we can report back the effectiveness of the ad,” Navin adds.
Called “Sync and Retarget”, it’s a technology Samba just launched in Europe, after two years operational in the US, appointing an EMEA VP from a London regional HQ.
Engineering is already carried out in Warsaw, Poland. The company just hired Jay Fowdar to direct the product in Europe and Hitesh Bhatt as the EMEA VP. IPG took a stake in Samba in 2015, and the company
Navin continues: “Our software is reporting back on a sub-second interval. You’re seeing real-time ratings – the real-time GRP, the engagement level, we score every show on German television in terms of the loyalty of the audience – are they ad skipping, are they channel hopping?”
This interview was taped at DMEXCO ’16. It is part of a video series of industry leaders. The series is sponsored by Videology. For more Beet.TV coverage of DMEXCO, please visit this page.
