LONDON – It is already helping advertisers understand what viewers are watching on TV channels around the world. Now it is gearing up to increase its European footprint significantly in the year ahead.
TV ad-tech firm Samba TV tells Beet.TV it just inked a deal that will allow it to so so.
“We recently did a partnership with a manufacturer in Europe that is expanding our footprint, and will represent over 50% of TV shipped in Europe in 2020,” says Dan Ackerman, chief revenue officer of the company whose technology inside TV sets tracks what viewers are watching or playing.
“(We are) very excited about the burgeoning media markets here in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and even some of the smaller markets. (There is) a lot of innovation happening in Europe.
“(It is) a great opportunity to bring new ways to target and measure TV audiences, especially in the expanded universe of TV audiences across streaming services and traditional broadcasters.”
San Francisco-based Samba was set up to help advertisers and broadcasters know, with certainty, which TV shows viewers were watching, for how long and how attentive they were.
Launched in 2008 and backed by investors including Mark Cuban, the outfit works by having software embedded on millions of viewing devices via app makers which bundle Samba’s recommendation features.
Ackerman calls it a “sensor that sits inside of smart TVs” that can recognize which linear, on-demand or games householders are consuming.
For viewers, it offers a personalized show guide in return. For ad agencies, it offers to use that viewing data to serve up buyable audiences based on all manner of categories.
“The viewership data and the TV ad exposure data for planning, for activation,” Ackerman adds. “But, probably, it’s most scalable and most significant value is really getting down to understanding how each medium performs – television, over the top, connected TV and digital … how they all work together to drive to an outcome that a business is interested in.”
This video was produced in London at the Future of TV Ads Global forum in December 2019. This series is sponsored by Finecast, the global addressable TV company that is part of WPP. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
