By Micaela Wenger
In November, Brett Jensen, director of solutions at iSpot (or iSpot.tv) joined the members of the Media Management Association over Zoom to discuss the company’s approach to measuring TV ads. After earning a degree in electronic journalism from Kansas State University, he decided to orient himself toward the media business, including radio sales, interactive advertising, and consulting, and never looked back.
In 2017, he began to work at iSpot, an 8-year-old U.S. measurement company with more than 200 employees. Unlike other measurement firms, iSpot specializes itself in measuring the exposure to and performance of TV ads. Its catalog contains about 1.6 million ads. iSpot believes that TV measurement requires a system that is “fast, accurate, and actionable.” Jensen criticized Nielsen’s small panel samples and its long waiting time for data access.
In contrast, iSpot collects smart TV data from 24 million sets in 16 million homes. This large sample is also census balanced. The company’s software is able to deliver to advertisers such metrics as view rate (attention), impressions, and attribution (credit to all spots seen before conversion). iSpot works with large companies, such as Target, American Express, AT&T, and Toyota.
Because ad-supported streaming services do not want their viewers to change the channel while ads are being played, iSpot is able to figure out which ads people want to see as they are watching TV and play those to specific viewers. iSpot allows publishers to see the reach and frequency of their ads as well, which are important considerations for advertising optimization.
