CTV advertising delivery and measurement platform Innovid has entered into an agreement to acquire TVSquared Ltd., a global measurement and attribution platform for linear or “converged” TV. The deal is valued at approximately $160 million.
Bringing together the measurement capabilities of these companies will aim at establishing a new standard for cross-platform measurement, or a “total view” at scale. TVSquared provides measurement for brands, agencies, publishers and broadcasters on six continents.
The combined offering will represent buy and sell-side customers, and will include ad servicing, creative personalization and optimization, measurement of audiences and outcomes across TV and digital video.
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“Innovid and TVSquared share complementary visions to transform TV measurement through a comprehensive view of audiences across all devices and platforms worldwide,” said Calum Smeaton, CEO and founder of TVSquared, who’ll be stepping down as CEO when the deal closes, according to a company release. “Joining forces establishes a cross-platform measurement solution that maps one of the largest datasets of audiences, homes and devices, at scale, across linear, CTV and digital video.”
Read more: Innovid becomes Olympics ad management partner
Smeaton will take on a strategy role in support of the Innovid integration, while TVSquared’s president, Jo Kinsella, will join the Innovid executive team.
Why we care. The TV ad ecosphere is in transition as more viewers are cutting the cord. This has been a narrative since before the pandemic, and has been accelerated somewhat since then.
However, since the 2015-2016 broadcast season, U.S. linear TV spend has dropped from $48.4 billion down to $40.7 billion in 2020-21. That’s still a significant spend that advertisers would like to make apples-to-apples with CTV and video in a single independent measurement and performance standard.
Advertisers might also have less confidence in the ability of measurement companies from traditional TV, like Nielsen, to be able to keep up with this digital transformation of TV, which still remains very fragmented across linear, CTV, digital video, with new streaming apps causing further fragmentation for audiences. Comscore Everywhere, released last month, is another attempt to bridge this gap.
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