Television measurement and analytics provider 605 is doubling its national footprint in a licensing deal with Inscape that augments and compliments MVPD data with smart-TV viewing insights. “The bigger the better in terms of data,” says 605 President & Co-Founder Ben Tatta.
With the addition of Inscape data, 605 can measure more than 20 million households—slightly less than 20% of the TV viewing universe—in a further move away from panel-based research methodology.
“We think that it’s really important for the industry to move to more census-based measurement,” Tatta says in this interview with Beet.TV.
Among the things that Inscape, which is owned by VIZIO, brings to the table for 605 is helping to fill voids across set-top box and over-the-air and OTT metrics. By combining set-top data with Inscape’s automatic content recognition data “we’re able to get better cross-screen measurement on services beyond just pay TV.”
In addition to expanding its national reach, 605 gains faster data processing for its programmer and provider clients. “We basically get data in near real-time” with a delay of “an hour or two” versus “one to three days in general” for set-top box data.
605, started by Dolan Family Ventures, also gets viewing data from Charter Communications cable subscribers, as Broadcasting & Cable reports.
Asked about audience duplication from the company’s data sources, Tatta says the duplication “is really essential because what’s interesting about the set-top box data is you’re actually capturing all viewing within the household, or at least what’s running through pay TV.
“Only until you have a full view of viewing in the household can you really get a sense in terms of where the viewing trends are,” for example share of consumption between pay-TV and OTT. “Or even just from one room to the next. Even though TV is bought at the household level kind of rolled up, being able to have a line of sight of viewership across all devices in the household is really important.”
Tatta adds that while advertiser focus on bottom-funnel or sales attribution is “incredibly important,” the industry should not neglect the “enormous contribution” TV makes to upper-funnel metrics, “whether it’s brand awareness, brand favorability and brand preference. Having a more holistic view of lift across the full funnel we think is really essential.”
