While a “TV identity graph” may sound simple, it consists of a whole lot more than television sets. To the tune of some 6.9 connected screens in the average household, according to 4INFO CEO Tim Jenkins.
“It’s interesting that somebody would try to separate television from the broader identity ecosystem,” Jenkins says in this interview with Beet.TV contributor and Furious Corp. CEO Ashley J. Swartz.
“When we talk about a TV identity graph, what we really mean is the ability to be able to get to all the devices, including connected televisions as well as digital devices, within the same household using something other than cookies to get to it,” says Jenkins.
“It allows you to do that one to one identification of all of those devices that people are actually viewing TV content through and being able to pull them together into a single audience.”
4INFO acts as “connective tissue” across some 500 million screens in 92 million households while serving as a match or onboarding partner for marketers.
Founded in 2004 with a focus on mobile search via text messaging, 4INFO will sponsor the Beet.TV half-day Leadership Forum titled Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a Fragmented World on March 5, hosted by Viacom at the company’s studios at 1515 Broadway in Manhattan. It will feature about a dozen industry leaders and an invitation-only audience of fewer than 100.
Jenkins says 4INFO’s overriding goal at the event is to educate the marketplace.
“What we’re really hoping we can do from a thought leadership standpoint is just trying to get people to understand how to use an identity graph to make what we call addressable TV space successful,” he says. “What we have found is there is a real lack of understanding about the scale in the space, how you actually make it work, what kind of business outcomes people can measure and what role identity plays in pulling all that together. We hope to be able to educate folks at a much deeper level.”
