The Next Big Thing in Data According to Dativa’s Michael Collette

If there is anyone who has built his career around data, it would have to be Michael Collette, CEO of Dativa, a fast-growing data science services start-up providing custom TV measurement strategy and solutions to brands, agencies and media companies.

Collette is a serial entrepreneur with four start-ups, including Dativa, dedicated to maximizing the value of data for use in media. “Most of my career was in technology – set top box software, the early days of digital satellite and multi-room DVR,” he explained. His professional crossroad came as a result of a shift in thinking about interactive television.

Charlene Weisler: How did you make the pivot from interactive TV into data?

Michael Collette: About 7 or 8 years ago, I was consulting with Canoe trying to figure out how to get interactive television working once again on set top boxes when I met with people at Turner who basically said, ‘eh, it’s never going to happen, but let us show you this thing.’ I was introduced to Zeev Neumeier (currently SVP of Product, Inscape) who was the technical founder of what was then TV Interactive Systems which became Cognitive Networks. That experience really started a significant pivot for me. We thought we were building an interactive television company, but our biggest investor said, ‘You’re not. You’re building a data company and that is why I am investing.’ I walked out of that meeting and turned to Zeev and said, ‘Do you know anything about data?’ He said, ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘Me neither! Let’s go!’ (laughs) It was very much like that. 

Weisler: Which led to Cognitive. (Disclosure: I consulted with Cognitive from 2013-2015)

Collette: Yes, we started to scale the company about 7 years ago. We did a bunch of really fun interactive TV stuff with LG as a customer but we quickly found that our investor was right: the most interesting and valuable output of the ACR system was the data. As the dataset began to scale, and as we started to get Vizio launched alongside LG, we saw some profound things happening. So I spent several years focused on making great data.

Weisler: I know you have a specific philosophy regarding data.

Collette: Yes. We took a different approach compared to other companies in the space. They were taking the data and creating services with it. We thought the more important thing to do was to make great data and to build trust in the data by being really transparent as to how was it made and what it was like. Data is complex.  It has to be transparent so people can use it properly. There are always pros and cons.  Raw data is rough.  We also wanted to empower an ecosystem so we partnered with lots of folks to let them chase different aspects of the use of that data. That is where the iSpot relationship came in, along with VideoAmp and Alphonso.  They came out of that early effort. The strategy has proven out well in that Vizio acquired Cognitive and created Inscape. Inscape has flourished with its focus on making the data and being transparent about how it’s made. 

Weisler: So what is the next big thing in data?

Collette: From my work with Inscape and my partnership with Tom Weiss, Dativa co-founder and CTO, it looked like all the emerging companies in the data-driven TV space were pivoting into each other - all around measurement.   It looked a lot like the ad tech train wreck with an oversupply of similar offerings.  We believed that a lot of companies were going to raise a lot of money. A few of them would get good access and a lot of them would struggle.  Our fundamental observation was that eventually what will happen is, as the market gets smarter about granular data, the endpoints in the markets - the brands, agencies and networks - are going to start to bring the data in-house. Some will bring that talent in but, at the end of the day, there is a real need for a professional services company to help those companies implement their data strategies. This is where Dativa comes in. It has been a professional services company from the start. We are not here to sell a platform. We operate as a service to help our customers build a platform that they want to use. We will help them extend it as they wish but they own it. We just build what our customers want, implementing the data they are licensing and not licensing to them what we have.

Weisler: Any company working in the data space has to be concerned about privacy.

Collette: This underscores why insourcing is so important. When our customer brings Inscape data into their own domain, for example, in that setting they can bring whatever other first or third data they have. So, if you’re a brand and you have customer data, you can match the consumption data you have to the viewing data privately without giving up possession of your data. In today’s privacy world, that is really important. You haven’t shared your customer’s data with anyone. You’re just using it for your own insights. From a privacy standpoint, that use of data is much, much more permissible. 

Weisler: How do you think this will play out in the media ecosystem?

Collette: Information is power. When an organization that never had access to fundamental data starts to have access to it, that organization starts to change.  Five years ago, we knew that this data was going to be transformational. But five years ago almost no organization had the skills to use it. That was a real limiter to growth which was why the third-party ecosystem players were necessary because you needed a skilled team between the data and the user to put it to work. That has changed. Now what we are seeing is that the media organizations are starting to build up their own data mining muscles. They are building inventory optimization and forecasting, which is a tricky data science undertaking. That kind of activity is growing and becoming more important. And each organization does it differently – they have different inputs, concerns and specific questions. For that reason, implementing data in-house is going to be increasingly important as it begins to make granular data close to currency class.

This article first appeared in Mediapost.com

  

Comscore’s Alexander Feldman Reveals How ACR is Key in Cross Platform Measurement

While Comscore has traveled a hard road over the past few years, it appears to be getting back on solid footing. The company’s recent product moves across its business units have been focused in advanced television in order to round out the company’s cross platform offering. As part of that strategic move, Comscore is using automatic content recognition technology (ACR) technology from Inscape to successfully link disparate data points into a viable cross platform measurement capability.

Comscore’s Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships, Alexander Feldman, sat down with TV[R]EV and detailed his company’s efforts in solving one of the media’s most challenging problems: Ensuring that every impression is counted no matter where, when or how it is viewed.

Charlene Weisler (CW): Why use ACR?
 

Alexander Feldman (AF): There are three interesting things about ACR. First is the Speed with which you can collect data. Historically, data was delivered through more manual means which would take weeks to deliver. With ACR we receive the data within days so we can deliver insights during a campaign and much faster to clients. And when you are able to deliver insights during a campaign, you are able to apply more dynamic creative optimization to discern what is working and what is not. Second is Accuracy. In other forms of data collection there are gaps and missing data, sometimes caused by human error in coding or from tags dropping off in certain environments. The third is Automation. Think of ACR as Shazam. It automatically finds content or advertising that it knows it is looking for because it is in the foundational data set or database.
 

CW: How is Comscore using Inscape’s ACR?
 

AF: The most popular way we are using ACR currently is in measurement such as in attribution. The idea is to prove out campaign efficacy, tune-in or return on investment by essentially closing that loop between whether that person saw a particular piece of content or ad and then finding that same individual within our panel. We have had success with then serving those individuals ads to gauge brand metrics within the purchase funnel. Is that particular piece of creative moving the top of the funnel or lower parts of the funnel?
 

CW: Do you re-sell or re-package the data? Is it integrated into any product offerings?
 

AF: We are not allowed to re-sell the data, but the strength of it as it pertains to Comscore is that when we ingest the ACR data we are able to fuse it with other assets. Comscore has tremendous scale, strong relationships and legacy clients. We are able to leverage ACR data within that framework and integrate that into existing products. Our Brand Survey Lift (BSL) is one product where we are using ACR data. The other kind of obvious use cases are in the planning space where we measure reach and frequency.
 

CW: What types of data and metrics are you using?
 

AF: Not to get too granular but content start time, duration, number of aggregate households reached, IP addresses, titles, are all tied back to individuals in our panel through a third party blind match. But there is a whole slew of granular data that we get from Inscape’s ACR insights.
 

CW: What successes have you realized from the data?
 

AF: I just got back from a conference where we highlighted a piece of new business that we closed with a large CPG brand that measured multiple campaigns using ACR data. We looked at the different types of creative running on many different networks and tied that back to our digital panel. Some of the findings that I thought were really compelling and maybe not-so-obvious to the client were that no single platform was more impactful than a comprehensive cross platform campaign. We saw that when a campaign ran across platforms, it generated lifts of +36% more than any individual platform.
 

The second thing we measured and presented was that 50% of the campaigns had one creative that was six times more impactful than all other creatives, regardless of platform. So that goes back to the power of ACR – we were able to find through our Brand Survey Lift product that there is one creative that typically accounts for a significant amount of the lift that you see in the campaign. Identifying that creative is critical during the campaign while you have the opportunity to prove it or switch it out.
 

Thirdly, we found that TV or TV-like platforms have the strongest synergy with social. The data point that we highlighted in that project was that social / TV delivery was 50% more effective in influencing purchase intent and awareness than other media mixes.
 

CW: How do you measure client success?
 

AF: Client success can be defined by the KPIs they are trying to meet, depending on where they are in the funnel. From my perspective, we are successful when we are providing incremental value to the client and helping them solve business decisions. For example, what does a conversion look like? Is it a visitation to a site, an RFI, or a visit to a location? The power of ACR is when it is combined with Comscore data processes and logic that normalize and standardize consumer viewing data and help us to measure it faster.
 

CW: What marketing initiatives does ACR data support for Comscore?
 

AF: Activation is a natural use case with that data. For example, a CPG client has brands in multiple different markets and while the initial project was U.S. based, we were able to project the potential for international expansion and activation. 
 

CW: What does Inscape ACR data facilitate or improve?
 

AF: They help plug gaps in the connected TV space which is an emerging area and is growing. Consumers are adopting connected TVs quickly. It adds an extra layer of information into our models and logic. So they are improving the overall data sets that we have by providing us with information that we never had. Comscore has historically integrated data from mobile, desktop, set top boxes. This is yet another form of device that is now probably the fastest growing form of TV or TV-like consumption. Inscape helps us increase our strengths beyond premium video and helps us amplify that and complete our offerings. 

This article first appeared in TVREV.

The Confusion Between Data and Measurement

If you read enough about what is going on in our industry today, you will see that Data is an all-powerful presence. It seems to command every conversation and rule over every project. As statistician W. Edwards Deming once quipped, “In God we trust. All others must bring data.”
But in our effusive fealty to Data, we sometimes give it more unfettered control over decision-making than it deserves. Not all data is relevant and not all data is good and pure. It needs to be assessed, put into context and framed by measurement. While there is no measurement without some form of data, data alone is unusable unless it is put into a structured measurement framework.
So I knew you would ask for definitions. In the media world, data is essentially a rough and structure-less collection of different types of quantities that has the potential to be used to draw conclusions.  Measurement enables us to draw accurate conclusions from the data by creating a logical structure for analysis. Data needs a logical and accurate measurement to be useful. Measurement without data is irrelevant.

“There are a lot of companies and agencies in the market cobbling together raw data or portions of data and mistaking that for actionable intelligence,” noted Sean Muller, CEO of the TV measurement company iSpot. “In order to use data effectively, it’s critical that the inputs into a model are cleaned, normalized and contextualized properly or entire framework will be off. Doing things like attribution using data that is not measurement grade or that is ad-hoc in nature is like building a house on the beach without preparing for the weather and tide patterns. Things will crumble pretty quickly,” he added.

Today, there are all types of data being thrown off from devices, culled from the internet, collected by businesses and otherwise amassed through various means. Data takes on many forms and sizes. There is attitudinal data that is more qualitative (like a series of open-ended comments) and data that looks like a bunch of unrelated numbers (MAC addresses coupled with viewing levels).

In the old days of television measurement, companies such as Nielsen relied on small representative samples to project the full population of television households and viewers. They took their viewing data and created measurement using edit rules and algorithms that formatted and contextualized their dataset into a projectable larger behavioral context. And yes, it was fairly accurate … as long as your network had enough meters in the sample to get statistically reliable projections.

In 1985, Nielsen’s sample size of 5,500 represented approximately 84.9 million homes (or just less than 0.01 percent of all TV households) when media options were less fragmented. But as omni-channel options expanded and the number of viewing opportunities increased, this small a sample measurement just didn’t cut it anymore. Currently, Nielsen estimates 119.9 million U.S. TV households with a sample of 40,000, or just over .03 percent of total U.S. TV homes. To Nielsen’s credit, they continue to expand their sample to include more national meters, portable people meters and the incorporation of local meters into the national sample. All are steps in the right direction but it might still not be enough for the tiny members of our media club.

Today, ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) measurement in TV is shaking things up. Nielsen recently bought Gracenote, in part to help layer in a much broader sample set from TV makers, to collect information from the glass of TVs regardless of which device or service is being used to deliver content and ads to the home. But the challenge is how to add that specific data source into the traditional and profitable metric of GRPs. Independent companies like Inscape, which licenses glass level viewing detection from over 11 million VIZIO SmartTVs, are offering datasets that are being incorporated into new systems used by networks, agencies and brands.

“The world is awash in data but without context, it isn’t useful. And without proper measurement you can’t find proper context,” said Allison Stern, co-founder of Tubular Labs, which, she says, is the only company to measure social video on a truly global scale. “In Tubular’s case we organize a massive amount of data about social video and then using measurement we can find trends around content types, and the velocity, engagement rates, and even audience quality that helps people make decisions.”

The advancements of these new data sources, coupled with the exploration of new measurement metrics, is a healthy evolution for media from a delivery scorecard to business outcome attribution. Measurement companies such as iSpot contribute to that effort along with companies that offer cross platform planning tools such as Omnicom, VideoAmp and 4C. All of this is at the center of the new addressable advertising consortium, Project OAR, which currently has nine networks signed on. All of these efforts successfully move data from its raw form into a projectable measurement that can be applied to business intelligence.

 This article first appeared in TV[REV]

Header photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Challenges and Opportunities in Advanced Television

To many in the industry, advanced advertising holds the promise of optimizing inventory across all dayparts and platforms by targeting consumers no matter where they are and when they are consuming content. 

The benefits to consumers are that ad messaging is relevant and contextual, therefore meaningful and helpful. In a perfect world, the meeting of business commerce at all points of contact in the funnel will be both seamless and measureable.

But there are still a few bumps in the road for Advanced advertising that need to be addressed before it can fulfill its full national potential. A recent panel at the Advanced Advertising Summit discussed how the industry can put it all together.

Growth But Challenges
The Advanced advertising market is “seeing growth,” stated Chris Pizzurro, VP Global Sales, Canoe. Still, Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom Media Group, listed three main challenges. “The biggest problem is awareness, then ease of use and then measurement,” he explained. “We need to focus on education and make the big shift from linear TV to thinking about TV in the digital space.” It is important to explain to advertisers why they should invest in advanced advertising, proving to them that it is worth the investment. Steuer explained that the current compensation models are based on grps costs and delivery targets and, as an industry, we should be looking at deliverables in parallel with advanced results. He predicted that, “It would be more efficient and we will have money left over to retarget.”

Challenges But Opportunities
While still essentially local, Advanced is also global. Denise Colella, SVP Advanced Advertising Products and Strategy, NBCU, noted that Sky TV has access to over 50 million global households enabling, “Global strategies that need to be implemented locally.” Measurement predicated on granular data points that are collected passively, and with privacy compliance, is improving. Jodie McAfee, SVP Sales and Marketing, Inscape, noted that his company, “generates TV viewing data on 10.5 million active TVs that must be connected to internet and opt-in to privacy.” Since all TVs sold today are connected TVs, the future will be more and more on the IP and thus facilitate the collection of all relevant consumption data. Inscape, according to McAfee, has a match key to the TV in the home anchored to the multi-touch devices, enabling better collection of usable data.

All panelists agreed that it is vital to think about the experience of the end users. Ease of use for advertisers is paramount, concluded, Colella. “We believe in an ad supported model that is hassle free,” she explained, “People are less tolerant of tech issues.”

This article first appeared in Cynopsis.

605 and Inscape Make the Best Sandwich, According to Ben Tatta of 605

The data analytics company 605 just announced that its dataset will now include Inscape’s viewing data, expanding 605’s footprint to more than 20 million U.S. homes. Inscape is a wholly-owned subsidiary of VIZIO and a leading provider of automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies and cross-screen metrics. Previously known as Cognitive, VIZIO is the largest single-source of opt-in smart TV viewing data available today.

According to the press release, this arrangement places 605 as one of the few companies in the industry to capture and measure set-top-box data along with other sources of TV viewership data, such as over the air (OTA) and basic over-the-top (OTT) viewing data from Inscape’s more than 10.5 million smart TVs. 

Ben Tatta, Co-Founder and President, offered further insights: 

Charlene Weisler:  What metrics are being used?

Ben Tatta: In addition to household-level impression and engagement metrics 605 maintains a library of over 5,000 household attributes (that are deterministically matched to the viewing data) that provide advertiser and programmer clients an unprecedented level of granularity when measuring and analyzing audiences and campaigns.  605 can also match digital data and 1st party CRM data to provide additional dimension on a cross-screen basis...and among unique customer types/segments.  The latter is essential in proving full funnel attribution to clients.  

Weisler: How will this partnership change, improve, enhance 605?

Tatta: With the addition of Inscape, 605 will now maintain one of the largest, matchable data-sets in the U.S.    By combining set-top box data and ACR data 605 will be in a unique position to measure nearly 100% of viewing in a household regardless of TV manufacturer, pay-TV provider or OTT service for more than 20 million homes nationwide.

Weisler: What are your expectations once this partnership is in place for a few months?

Tatta: ACR data and set-top box data are like peanut butter and jelly.  The two datasets complement each other perfectly.  Our hope is that in three months we will have the best PBJ sandwiches available anywhere.  

This article first appeared in Cynopsis