NEW YORK—The connected TV ad platform Innovid has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire TVSquared in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $160 million.

The deal for TVSquared, which had revenue of between $20 million and $22 million in 2021, positions Innovid as a single source for ad-serving and measurement for converged TV.

“In acquiring TVSquared, we aim to provide the most complete view of the total TV and digital universe through a scalable, currency-grade measurement platform,” said Zvika Netter, CEO and co-founder of Innovid. “Additionally, we immediately accelerate and broaden our scope globally, as brands, agencies, publishers, and broadcasters on six continents rely on TVSquared to maximize reach, identify the right audiences and drive business growth with TV. As the market demands greater accountability, Innovid and TVSquared are reimagining the future of cross-platform TV measurement together.”

“By digitizing cross-platform TV advertising, we believe this combination will give advertisers, across the ecosystem, everything they need to transact at scale,” added Jo Kinsella, president, TVSquared. “Together, TVSquared and Innovid are at the center of TV’s transformation, meeting the market’s needs for a converged TV measurement alternative.”

Upon closing, Calum Smeaton will be stepping down as TVSquared CEO to take on a strategy role in support of the integration with Innovid. TVSquared’s president, Kinsella, who has been with the company almost since its inception will join the Innovid executive team, reporting into Netter and leading the measurement business.

The combined entity will represent buy-and sell-side customers and process billions of impressions events daily, the companies said. The joint offering will include ad serving, creative personalization and optimization, outcomes and audience measurement, including reach, frequency and unique unduplicated reach, for the total TV and digital universe.

The TVSquared acquisition is expected to close by the end of Innovid’s fiscal second quarter, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. 

NEW YORK & EDINBURGH, Scotland—A recent survey of media buyers in the U.S., the UK, German and Australia found that buyers are taking a more converged view of television in their campaigns and planning, with more than 75% of respondents agreeing that TV is now defined as linear and streaming platforms, and more than 70% believing that all forms of TV should be sold on impressions, according to a TVSquared report.

That marks a major global shift in thinking from the past when digital was sold the basis of impressions while TV used ratings. It also highlights a move towards using impressions that has been embraced by major TV and measurement companies in recent months. 

“The State of Converged TV: A Look at Global Trends & Adoption” report surveyed nearly 1,000 buyers in the U.S., UK, Germany and Australia and analyzed billions of ad impressions across 20 converged TV campaigns active on TVSquared’s ADvantage platform. 

Across all four markets, the findings from the study indicate that buyers are approaching linear and streaming in similar ways, and that the current and future states of converged TV are putting a spotlight on the need for new currencies and holistic, cross-platform measurement, the report said. 

TVSquared’s converged TV campaign analysis revealed that, on average, the audience overlap of linear and OTT/CTV campaigns is approximately 30%, meaning that, on average, 70% of the audiences reached via streaming could not be reached with linear alone. Findings also indicate that brands should be committing at least 10% of TV impressions to streaming in order to achieve at least 15% incremental reach.

Data from the U.S. survey also highlighted the need to move past legacy models and toward a more holistic, transparent converged TV marketplace, the researchers said. 

They found that 89% of buyers cited the ability to holistically manage linear and streaming campaigns as an important factor when deciding to invest in converged TV.

More than 90% said transparency of metrics across linear and streaming channels and publishers was critical in order to devote ad spend to converged TV.

While 86% cited the need to achieve cross-platform TV measurement and attribution as a top priority; 57% stated that “accuracy of cross-platform TV measurement and attribution” was also a top challenge, the researchers said. 

Very large majorities (94%) also indicated that the ability to measure incremental reach of streaming beyond linear was a critical factor for investing in converged TV.

Additional U.S. survey findings also indicated that advertisers are trying to break through silos that have long existed between digital and traditional TV advertising. Among buyers leveraging converged TV strategies today, TVSquared found that linear and streaming are being treated in a more similar way than previously believed.

A third of buy-side respondents ranked attribution and outcomes (for online and offline activities) as a top key performance indicator (KPI) for converged TV, marking a big difference for linear, which has traditionally been used for reach. 

Half of the respondents said reach and frequency were equally as important for digital TV buys as linear, and incremental audience reach was ranked as one of the most important metrics by 43%, the report said. 

More than 40% of buyers are managing both linear and streaming channels for performance/outcomes weekly, and between 10-15% are doing it on a daily cadence.

Even for linear, 33% of marketers are optimizing campaigns for performance and 32% are optimizing creatives on a weekly cadence, which closely matches streaming at 35% and 31%, respectively.

“The TV ecosystem is now rooted in cross-platform, and we must deliver a transactable currency that allows us to count and ascribe value in a similar way – across linear and streaming – to ensure TV budgets continue to grow,” said Jo Kinsella, president, TVSquared. “Reliable, transparent measurement across campaigns will ensure that marketers’ total TV investments and impression allocations are effective at achieving audience reach and outcomes across TV everywhere.”

A copy of “The State of Converged TV: A Look at Global Trends & Adoption,” is available here.

NEW YORK—TVSquared has reached an agreement with NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations—which includes 42 NBC and Telemundo owned stations and nine NBC Sports Regional Sports Networks—to provide TVSquared’s TV attribution system for use by local advertisers.

The TVSquared offering is an analytics platform that provides advertisers with same-day views into how linear and digital TV campaigns are directly impacting business outcomes, things like website traffic, app engagement, search, SMS/phone activity and actual sales.

Specifically, the NBC-owned stations and RSN local advertisers will be able to evaluate the performance of both linear and OTT advertising; measure how ad campaigns directly impact multiple business-specific KPIs; optimize buys to reach audience segments that both respond and convert to improve ROI; maximize local TV’s reach by scaling across 30 markets; and understand TV performance at granular levels.

The TVSquared service is now available in every market covered by the NBC-owned stations and RSNs.

NEW YORK—Comcast Spotlight has launched a new product that it says will offer greater accountability to local TV advertising, the Instant IMPACT. Powered by TVSquared, Instant IMPACT is an attribution system allows for the tracking of TV ad campaign, including its digital activity.

What makes this a key device for local stations is its ability to measure lower-funnel activity.

“We are able to offer our clients an attribution tool that works on the local level and is also automated—therefore scalable across the thousands of local advertisers who place campaigns with Comcast Spotlight,” said Andrea Zapata, vice president of research and insights for Comcast Spotlight.

Instant IMPACT works with Comcast Spotlight placing a pixel on a client’s website to track its web traffic. A baseline of the website’s traffic is established before a TV ad campaign airs. Then when the ad starts, Instant IMPACT monitors visits to the site within 30 minutes of an airing on linear TV for the length of the campaign. Once the campaign is complete, the timing of incremental visitors to the client’s website is correlated to TV activity. Customers also have access to a custom dashboard to filter the data by zones, creative, weekday or daypart.

The data is measured by TVSquared’s ADvantage analytics platform. This data is then analyzed to create optimized schedules.