AUSTIN, Texas—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today announced lawsuits against Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense and TCL Technology Group Corp., accusing them of secretly recording what Texans watch in their homes.

Hisense and TCL are both based in China, which Paxton’s office says raises serious concerns about consumer data harvesting. The situation is exacerbated by China’s National Security Law, which allows its government to collect data on U.S. consumers.

At issue is the use of Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology, which Paxton alleges unlawfully collects personal data. ACR software can capture screenshots of a user’s TV display every 500 milliseconds, monitor viewing in real time and transmit that information to the company without the knowledge or consent of viewers, the AG’s office said.

Consumer electronics companies can then sell the consumer data ACR collects to target ads across platforms for a profit. The attorney general alleges that the practice puts sensitive consumer information, such as passwords and bank information, at risk.

“Companies, especially those connected to the Chinese Communist Party, have no business illegally recording Americans’ devices inside their own homes,” said Paxton. “This conduct is invasive, deceptive and unlawful. The fundamental right to privacy will be protected in Texas because owning a television does not mean surrendering your personal information to Big Tech or foreign adversaries.”

The lawsuits against Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense and TCL are available online.

NEW YORK—Yahoo Advertising is addressing the splintering advertising market with a new product that blends datasets to give advertisers greater perspective on connected TV (CTV) and linear audience viewers. 

Called Unified TV Audiences, the new product offers advertisers a way to plan, activate and measure across 108 million U.S. households in Yahoo Demand Side Platforms (DSP) in an efficient and effective way, the company said.

“As the landscape of TV viewership data becomes increasingly fragmented and complex, advertisers face the challenge of adequately targeting and measuring their audiences across TV platforms and channels,” said Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, chief review officer at Yahoo.

“Unified TV Audiences solve for this by blending CTV and linear data so advertisers have a holistic view of the TV ecosystem, enabling them to more accurately reach their intended audiences, while optimizing strategies, targeting and performance.”

The unified data offering combines TV datasets, such as those derived from automatic content recognition (ACR) and linear set-top boxes (STBs). The Yahoo DSP user panel of more than 205 million logged-in U.S. users also enhances the Unified TV Audiences offering.

Combined, these data sources provide ad buyers with a comprehensive view of TV viewership and a means to access desired audience segments based on knowledge about CTV and linear TV viewing behavior, it said.

One early adopter of Unified TV Audiences, eBay, already has used the data to enhance the effectiveness of its TV advertising, Yahoo Advertising said. 

By identifying linear TV audiences exposed to NASCAR programming and insurance commercials, eBay Motors was able to extend its reach to those audiences watching CTV and digital channels, thereby positioning itself prominently in the auto parts market, it said.

An eBay comparison of a previous single-source TV data segment strategy to a campaign relying on Yahoo Unified TV Audiences revealed the new offering led to an average 52% increase in campaign reach across devices and audiences, Yahoo Advertising said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—LG Ads Solutions has announced the global rollout of its proprietary automatic content recognition (ACR) technology across LG TVs globally. 

The upgrade, which will replace legacy technology, and put the new ACR solution on millions of smart TVs across Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Australia, will help the company better understand viewing patterns and the performance of ad campaigns on connected TVs.

The rollout covers 27 countries across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Australia. ACR provided by LG Ads Solutions is already active on LG smart TVs in the U.S. 

As of September, LG Ads Solutions has become the exclusive provider of all LG CTV inventory and data worldwide. 

“This ACR rollout marks the next major phase of our global CTV advertising business with LG Ads Solutions,” explained CEO Raghu Kodige. “It is a highly significant moment for brands across four continents, who increasingly need to reach cord-cutters and light-TV viewers who have migrated to OTT services, and to understand incremental reach over traditional linear TV services. Now with LG Ads Solutions, brands globally can plan, activate, and measure CTV advertising using the industry’s best ACR data set to help guarantee campaign success.”

The ACR data will help brands understand, in an anonymized fashion, which TV ads have aired, or not aired, and how many times, in any given household, the company said. 

For brands, this means they can increase frequency levels for underexposed households, cap frequency for overexposed households, conquest households that are exposed to competitor’s ads, and more. It also informs brands and agencies which households they are missing completely due to cord-cutting.

The data can also be used to measure the effectiveness of the ad. 

LG Ads Solutions already powers CTV campaigns in over 40 countries globally. Now, brands in any country covered by the ACR rollout can immediately begin working with LG Ads Solutions to understand TV audience viewership in their country at a granular level, in order to pinpoint granular audience segments and to optimize reach, frequency, and ad effectiveness across linear and streaming television, the company said. 

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—Samba TV, a provider of omniscreen advertising and analytics, has launched its Real-time TV Viewership Dashboard, an interactive TV analytics tool that provides users with geographic and demographic analysis of viewership in real-time. 

Samba TV has rolled out the tool to four of the largest media markets: the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Australia, with plans to expand it further in the future. 

The Dashboard draws on Samba TV’s automatic content recognition (ACR) technology that is integrated into 24 smart TV brands to provide the viewing information. It is free to users who register with the company. 

“The Olympics this year will underscore the importance of television and its unique ability to bring together billions of people in living rooms across the globe,” said Samba TV co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin. “Now more than ever, TV data is critical for the media industry desperate to understand the rapid changes in viewership behaviors pre-, mid-, and post-pandemic. In the spirit of using data to drive transparency in media and foster innovation in the viewing experience of TV, we are pleased to offer the industry this powerful tool at no cost to facilitate discussion and innovation.”

“Having been at the forefront of providing our clients the most innovative and scalable data, Samba TV’s Real-time TV Viewership Dashboard is an important resource for every global brand engaged in large-scale events like the Olympics,” added IPG Media Lab managing director Chad Stoller. “This interactive tool provides comprehensive and at-scale TV analysis, imperative to our industry where there have been historic challenges making decisions with real-time data.”

The Real-time TV Viewership Dashboard, available on Samba TV’s website, allows advertisers the ability to see what channels and shows are being watched in their city or country within seconds. The dashboard leverages the company’s proprietary automatic content recognition (ACR) technology to provide in-the-moment insight into viewership across markets. 

"In today’s more addressable, measurable media ecosystem, marketer needs have evolved – they want to buy TV advertising the way they transact digitally – more dynamic, more flexible, more informed by data, and importantly, optimized in real-time,” said Dentsu's Amplifi U.S. president Mike Law. "Audiences around the world will be tuning into the Olympics almost universally, and tools like Samba TV’s Real-time TV Viewership Dashboard can enable understanding that fuels in-campaign buying decisions like never before.”

Samba TV’s ACR technology, integrated at the chipset level across 24 Smart TV brands globally, identifies content that appears on the TV screen including TV shows, commercials, movies, and video games. With a global addressable footprint of 46 million devices, Samba TV enables advertisers, TV networks, and publishers to discover their TV audiences, amplify their marketing message across screens, and quantify the impact of their advertising.

For more information, visit https://www.samba.tv/business/real-time-tv-viewership.

TV measurement is going through big changes, according to a new whitepaper from TiVo.

After years of audience estimates being based on small samples or panels of viewer, big data has come to TV in the form of set-top-box data and automated content recognition.

Those new forms of data “are set to radically change the way marketers, networks and broadcasters measure TV viewership, plan media buys and execute ad campaigns,” TiVo says.

While not mentioning Nielsen by name, the report says that using old-school TV measurement—in a digital age is creating skepticism about measurement from networks and marketers.

“The root of this growing skepticism is the continued reliance on small panels – numbering in the tens of thousands of households – to represent the TV viewing behavior of 120+ million U.S. households. As one interview subject with a background in statistics put it, ‘modeling the entire population from such a small sample necessitates lots of assumptions and risks many inaccuracies,’” the report says.

Nielsen stands by its approach.

“To accurately measure anything, you need to be able to directly observe it and sample it in a representative way. That is why our industry standard panel is and will continue to be the foundation of television measurement,” said Kelly Abcarian, senior vice president, product leadership at Nielsen.

“Panels are purposely built for persons level media measurement, while big data is a byproduct of a machine. So not only is this device level data instead of persons level data, but it is also merely an unrepresentative bigger sample. A sample that is incomplete, biased and discriminates against those excluded from its measurement is a problem regardless of its size. If big data comes more from high rises, city dwellers or apartments instead of private residences, meaning you don’t get data from all parts of the market and you don’t have a truth set that can be used for adjustments, you can’t pretend it doesn't matter,” Abcarian said. “As we have seen in digital, when data is not accurate or transparent, this results in under delivery of the ROI goals and advertisers will either lose confidence in television as a medium, or the agency, or both.”

Measurement is a more complicated proposition now than when there were three networks and families watched on TV set in the living room. Now there are new platforms and devices and an explosion of content. Marketers also have experience with digital media, which promises precise measurement, targeted audiences and feedback on how users responded to content and advertising.

TiVo says the new forms of viewing data are being collected at scale, are highly granular, are being built for new viewing methods and can be integrated into marketing models.

Set-top-box data is the largest source of TV viewing data at this point. One downside, however is that because of the fragmented nature of the cable industry combining data from different operators can be tricky.

“The biggest problem – and one that limits the number of companies willing to even tackle STB data aggregation – is dealing with the variety of file formats, data structures and levels of granularity,” the TiVo report said. “Concerns about how well STB data reflects the overall population persist, since 17%of TV households rely purely on over-the-air signals and an increasing number of younger households are cutting the cord.”

Data based on automated content recognition is available from fewer viewers at this point.

“Manufacturers are only beginning to share ACR data with other companies or withholding it completely, limiting the reach of ACR data available today,” the report says. “Vizio is a notable exception, but census-level ACR data availability would require active participation from major manufacturers – and none appear willing to cooperate with others.”

On the plus side, the TiVo report says ACR data collection benefits from its flexibility, allowing the capture of viewing data across linear, DVR and smart TV app viewing, although there may be data gaps in VOD and some long-tail content due to watermarking requirements.

It is tough to combine set-top-box viewing data with commercial logs, the report says.

“ACR technology enables the tracking of ad units at the individual device level without having to rely upon commercial as-run logs. This allows for faster reporting on ad delivery and more accurate data for addressable TV advertising. Nonetheless, taking advantage of this technology requires advertisers to incorporate ACR-ready watermarks during the production and distribution process,” the report said.

The presence of clear, trackable consumer conversion activity is essential, as with all attribution, the report added.

While the new methods of audience data collection have advantages, adopting them faces hurdles, the report says. Those included:

• Industry inertia and the currency conundrum: “Despite the limitations of traditional, panel-based TV measurement, it is the currency by which billions of dollars of TV advertising is bought and sold. And, it is no small task to shift from today’s gross rating point (GRP)-based TV buying model to the impression-based buying model required to maximize the benefits of next-gen TV data,” the report says.

• Data quality transparency:For next-gen TV data to become the new standard, data vendors will need to offer greater transparency into their collection approach, modeling methods and data sources.

• Consumer privacy and regulation: Digital data collection and targeting has long been subject to a set of self-regulatory guidelines, but the nascent nature of TV data collection means these standards are still evolving.

Looking ahead, greater data scale, quality standards, privacy protections and ease of access through aggregation will enable marketers and networks to more seamlessly leverage the strengths of both set-top-box and ACR data,” the report said.

“People-based marketing will become a reality as marketers and networks stop evaluating TV ad exposure in aggregate demographic groups and instead map individual TV viewing behavior to cross-device marketing exposure and attributed outcomes. Now that marketers have these capabilities across other screens, they will also demand them from TV,” the report said.