With so many media measurement solutions in the marketplace, how could there possibly be room for another?
Because few of them manage to bring together a consumer’s entire consumption in a unified system, according to Joanna Drews.
Drews is the CEO and co-founder of HyphaMetrics, a new measurement solution provider she says will offer a wide view of consumption from getting user data at the source.
Veterans for ‘zero-party’
HyphaMetrics’ metre technology includes:
- “Visual analysis of incoming video signals being displayed on the TV … content, ads, brand recognition”.
- It employs a “device is hooked up directly to the TV, with cable boxes and OTT devices routed through the meter to the TV,” Drews tells Beet.TV.
- The system can see viewers’ content journey with a TV UI, meaning it can see programme guide behaviour like live selections versus DVR.
- That gadget also collects data for every IP-enabled device in a house.
- It’s all done on a panel basis wherein participants can remain passive viewers.
HyphaMetrics is founded by Drews, a former Comscore and GroupM exec, together with Mike Bologna, previously president of GroupM’s MODI Media advanced TV unit and president of one2one Media.
The company has a $2 million early-round investment. In this video interview with Beet.TV editorial advisor Jon Watts, Drews explains how it works.
“Our entire ethos is to leverage next-generation technologies, merge them with industry-accepted and expected best practices in order to produce what we call ‘zero-party data’,” she says.
Measuring the glass
Specifically, HyphaMetrics’s ClearView Metrics offering is measuring on-device media consumption from a panel of 5,000 homes.
“Our technology is able to measure what I like to say the ‘glass layer’ of the TV,” Drews adds. “We are not listening to what is occurring on the TV, we are watching what is occurring on the TV, and we are able to measure everything that’s occurring.
“So it doesn’t matter if you’re watching through an OTT device, a video gaming console, playing a video game, using a set top box, we are definitively measuring all of those environments directly on the TV.
“And then we’re also measuring the other devices in the home, all in association with the people within the home. So as a result, the data is coming from a single source.
“We should be able to figure out exactly what is occurring on the TV in an unduplicated fashion between set top box, linear streaming, etcetera.”
Pilot Program
HyphaMetrics aims to make its consumption data available via “licensing to TV networks, media agencies, digital media platforms, multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), and other research companies”, MediaPost reports.
Drews says it could be used to understand program-level measurement of Netflix consumption or compatible viewing of different streaming services or data on ad loads on YouTube.
ClearView Metrics is in development. “We are focused right now on a pilot program that we will announce very soon before the end of the year,” Drews says.
“And the intent is really to truly understand at a granular level, at a definitive level, what is occurring in the home? What media are people exposed to, whether it’s content or advertising, and which devices those exposures occur on?”
