Having bulked up on assets in the smart-TV space, Nielsen is targeting next year for the launch of a platform that will help scale addressable television advertising. Key to the effort will be executing ad replacement and decisioning.

One of Nielsen’s most recent acquisitions was of Sorenson Media. The company now has technical underpinnings of a platform for targeted TV ads that encompasses delivery, data-driven targeting, unified campaign management, and measurement, as Variety reports.

“All media is going to go addressable,” Kelly Abcarian, the GM of Nielsen’s new Advanced Video Advertising unit, says in this interview with Beet.TV.

She says some $4.7 billion worth of addressable ads will be bought next year. “That’s made up of OTT, advanced linear-driven audiences, as well as the cable two minutes of addressability that they’ve built a sizeable business against as well.”

In addition to Sorenson, Nielsen acquired Qterics, a smart-TV software and privacy management vendor, and Gracenote, which does automatic content recognition.

“First and foremost, measurement is the bedrock of what Nielsen provides to the marketplace and what we’ll continue to do,” Abcarian says. “We’re really trying to focus on how we unlock addressable in a way that brings standardization across all those impressions.”

She envisions an open platform. “As we look to do ad replacement on a television screen, we’re also creating unique capabilities in the ad decisioning space to enable buyers and sellers to execute against that efficiency alongside of other ad decisioning engines and algorithms and capabilities in the marketplace.”

Going beyond the traditional two minutes per hour of addressable TV ad inventory that goes to distributors, “We’re really unlocking the full sixteen minutes of inventory so that programmers, both broadcasters cable networks, can truly execute in a one to one addressable way.

“It’s a matter of setting up campaigns and getting those instructions across the buyers and sellers around what ads are eligible across linear television for replacement. We’re really sitting in the middle providing the measurement and the simplicity around understanding what was reached, how often were they reached across what platforms. Then providing mechanics to actually do the true ad replacement on the glass screen itself.”

In addition to Sorenson’s smart-TV data from Samsung, Nielsen is working with LG and chip maker MediaTek, according to Abcarian.

By Steve Ellwanger on    @steveellwanger