VideoAmp is touting adoption of its measurement tools and data by TV ad buyers and sellers, disclosing Tuesday that more than $1 billion in media dollars have been guaranteed year-to-date using the measurement vendor as currency.
That reflects 641% year-on-year growth and VideoAmp says it’s on track to guarantee $1.5 billion in ad dollars by year-end.
The 2024 projections compare to “a few tens of millions of dollars only a few years back,” VideoAmp Chief Commercial and Growth Officer Peter Bradbury told StreamTV Insider via an email Q&A in late May. At the time he noted the vendor was expecting $1 billion guaranteed on its currency by year-end, so the updated figures represent more growth since then.
Founded in 2014, VideoAmp is a relative newer entrant in the measurement space. Alongside vendors like iSpot, Comscore and Samba TV, it has been competing to build up capabilities and datasets to provide advanced forms of measurement that accurately reflect video viewership amid shifts to streaming and can go beyond traditional demographics of age and gender.
Among its product set, VideoAmp offers clean room technology with a comingled ID graph in one workflow, with privacy-compliant cross-platform measurement that brings TV viewership data into one footprint spanning 39 million households and 63 million devices.
Like others, the vendor is working to build cross-platform measurement tools that can provide accurate and transparent audience and ad data against the backdrop of a TV viewing and ad buying landscape that’s seen content and audiences splinter across services, platforms and distribution modes and as streaming continues to capture increased consumption shares.
Evolving currencies, role of panels?
These vendors are also looking to serve as alternate currencies challenging incumbent measurement giant Nielsen, which itself came under scrutiny for inaccuracy of its ratings during Covid, giving newer entrants an opportunity.
Nielsen’s Media Rating Council accreditation for its national TV ratings was temporarily suspended in 2021 until it was reinstated early last year. Nielsen continues to be used as currency across the industry and has its own new product bringing big data into the panel mix with Nielsen One.
Some ad buyers and sellers are using multiple currencies and measurement partners, as respective vendors continue to hone their strengths. Commenting over the summer about the competitive landscape, Bradbury, a former Nielsen senior executive who joined VideoAmp in January, emphasized the need to evolve measurement in step with how consumers choose to use media.
“That can only happen if all the major players put their best foot forward and raise the competitive bar. The old way of doing things in measurement and transacting isn’t suitable,” he said via email. “It’s far more expensive than it once was, and not nearly as accurate as it could and should be considering the technology at our disposal.”
In terms of aiming to solve challenges for the media industry, Bradbury posited, “Why not pool our best capabilities together towards advanced currencies?”
Still, some reports have noted that most publishers and agencies have kept using familiar Nielsen panels, including during the Upfronts as it’s been a long-time provider and can offer capabilities like historical comparisons. According to AdExchanger, buyers also lack confidence in other video currencies about their ability to compare linear and streaming viewership.
Asked by StreamTV Insider about the role of panels, VideoAmp’s Bradbury acknowledged their traditional role as a “bedrock of audience measurement” but contends a representative panel-based snapshot doesn’t work the same way in today’s multi-screen world, which he said requires larger sample sizes.
“While panels can still play a role in calibration and acting as ground source truth set for big data, they’re no longer viable as the primary source for media measurement because they are not large enough to maintain statistical accuracy with the massive fragmentation of content and audiences across screens,” he commented. “For panels to be effective in today’s TV measurement space, we need sample sizes in the tens of millions.”
As VideoAmp touts currency growth, the company has faced its own hurdles. It cut 20% of its workforce at the start of this year alongside changes to the C-suite that saw founder and long-time CEO Ross McCray step down as media veteran Peter Liguori took the helm. It’s since made new hires, including expanding the senior sales leadership team in April.
Market seeing value in more refined currencies
While not replacing traditional currencies, VideoAmp is seeing interest and uptake from different stakeholders across the ecosystem for more refined data.
In Tuesday’s announcement, VideoAmp cited “rapid demand” for its advanced currency and measurement tools, spanning major broadcast, cable, streaming providers, agencies and advertisers.
Adoption of its measurement and currency represent 98% coverage across the TV publisher ecosystem, 11 agency groups and more than 1,000 advertisers. It also has some big names on the client roster, including include A+E Networks, Allen Media Group, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, IPG Mediabrands and Omnicom Media Group.
In the Q&A with STV, Bradbury commented on trends for currency and measurement, saying that “everyone in the media and measurement industry is under enormous pressure to navigate the complicated challenges we’re being faced with.”
According to the commercial and growth chief, VideoAmp estimates over $100 billion ad dollars are wasted each year. Turning that problem around, he asserted, starts with data and tech “to accurately measure the right audiences and identify who they are.”
There has been some hesitation by the industry to that idea before, but Bradbury contends advertisers, and increasingly agencies, are warming up to it more and more, particularly in terms of how they want to transact deals.
And it’s clear the market is seeing value in more refined currencies, he said.
“We are seeing a very large and accelerating shift from broader demographic based demos to much more refined, data driven definition audiences,” Bradbury commented. “There has even been steady progress with C3 and C7 linear measurement, as advanced audiences offer more possibilities and adoption rates triple and even quadruple over the past several years.”
To the point of agency’s coming around, VideoAmp’s announcement included an endorsement from OMG Chief Investment Officer for North America Geoffrey Calabrese.
“As an early adopter of big data, VideoAmp has made profound contributions to currency innovation. Aiming to right-size the industry’s measurement capabilities to reflect total video viewership and support audience planning and buying,” said Calabrese in a statement. “We applaud VideoAmp’s efforts to foster healthy competition in our marketplace and for enabling our clients to transact and measure against the audiences and KPIs that matter most to them.”
Building industry confidence
Helping to boost confidence in the eyes of the industry, VideoAmp this year secured certification from the U.S. Joint Industry Committee and counted endorsements from major publisher clients.
In April it was one of the vendors certified by the OpenAP-led U.S. JIC, validating its data as suitable national cross-platform currency for ad buyers and sellers to transact on. The JIC also certified Comscore as currency at the time and iSpot a few months later.
iSpot was the only of the three to secure JIC certification for all three categories evaluated, including big data plus people. Comscore and VideoAmp, didn’t have their big data products certified as transactable at scale by the JIC for personified demos, with the organization saying the vendors needed improvements “based on the need to provide acceptable personified reach metrics, a core requirement outlined by media buyers.”
During VideoAmp’s own pre-Upfronts event it announced a product roadmap across sports, cross-platform, digital and advanced currency, where dozens of clients showcased their partnership success, helping to further validate its platform.
“It also really helped us sign up a bunch more clients which is always a great thing too,” Bradbury added.
Being part of high-profile partnerships like at NBCUniversal’s One24 technology event helps VideoAmp’s standing. And these are associations he said the vendor doesn’t take for granted.
Ultimately, the company aims to help reshape the way clients plan, buy, activate and evaluate media investments as VideoAmp works to tackle measurement challenges facing the industry.
“Brands need to prove their advertising is driving sales. Agencies are under fire to make their buys more efficient. Publishers are on an urgent hunt for new profits from advertising and content. It all comes down to who is more equipped to help them, and we happen to be rewriting the playbook,” commented Bradbury. “It’s how we were able to develop our tech-led solution VALID (VideoAmp Linked Identity & Data) which increases the precision and accuracy of reaching advanced targeted audiences. Our identity graph has a 70% higher match rate, and our clean rooms enable us to combine data without compromising privacy.”
Also on the client roster is WBD, which this year tapped VideoAmp to power its proprietary first-party data platform Olli. The platform enables campaign planning, activation and measurement across WBD’s portfolio, and since integrating VideoAmp has seen 166% growth in cross-platform campaigns guaranteed on the vendor’s currency.
WBD on Tuesday gave a nod to VideoAmp capabilities.
David Porter, head of Ad Sales Research, Data, and Insights at Warner Bros. Discovery, in a statement said: “Integrating VideoAmp’s state-of-the-art measurement tools into our Olli platform has delivered extraordinary levels of growth, efficiency, and execution to our partners’ cross-platform Data Driven Video campaigns across WBD’s iconic portfolio of brands and programming.”
Wider adoption in the industry also goes to the trend of a multi-currency and measurement future that VideoAmp wants to be a key part of.
“If we continue to level up our innovation and collaboration in this way, it gives the measurement space a newfound competitive spirit and we hope our peers can join us on that journey,” Bradbury said.
And as consumers spend time across platforms, including social, it’s looking to measure multiple facets of the video ecosystem. This year it partnered with Snap to integrate the company’s full set of social inventory into VideoAmp’s planning tool.
In terms of product roadmap, Bradbury previously cited successfully launched proof of concepts (PoCs) for sports measurement with the NBA and MLB and noted plans to build on that with a broader launch for NFL measurement starting with the 2024-2025 broadcast season. VideoAmp has also made significant progress in secondary local measurement reads, with the intent to operationalize local currency, he noted.
In the announcement Tuesday, the company said it’s working with all major publishers on data integrations to enable advanced planning for media buyers ahead of the 2025-2026 Upfront planning cycle. Looking ahead, VideoAmp plans to launch outcome-based measurement capabilities in the fourth quarter of 2024.