How Clypd Accelerates Xandr's Position in Advanced TV

Demonstrating its commitment to TV advertising, Xandr acquired clypd, a data-driven sell-side TV platform of choice for more than 100 broadcast and cable networks that also boasts both a private and an open marketplace.  Clypd will complement Xandr’s recent product launches, including Xandr Monetize and its premium marketplace, Community.  This will help accelerate converged buying across addressable, digital, data-driven linear and OTT.

The clypd acquisition allows Xandr to significantly expand its inventory for Community through a new agreement with SpotX, which will act as its exclusive third-party supply-side platform for 2020.  The move will permit advertisers working with Community to tap directly into the SpotX platform.
The net result of this acquisition is that clypd adds broadcast and cable TV network inventory tracking to Xandr's digital and addressable footprint, effectively enabling greater convergence of cross-platform media.

Synergies and Connections
Clypd integrated Nielsen television ratings data into its platform in 2016.  There were two key benefits: Agencies could execute on custom audience segmentations and clypd could scale and streamline advanced TV audience contracts through the full lifecycle of a TV buy.

Now, with clypd's integration into Xandr's platform, there will be greater convergence within the full sales cycle between addressable TV, data-driven linear TV, mobile and over-the-top channels on streaming video services.  This will also streamline messaging to consumers to ensure that they are receiving relevant, seamless and, therefore, more compelling advertising.  This is in addition to Xandr's own first-party viewership insights.

This all feeds nicely into Community's premium marketplace, which is powered by Xandr, and includes inventory from a range of top networks: WarnerMedia's CNN, TNT, TBS, truTV, B/R Live, Otter Media and Warner Bros., as well as A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Bloomberg, Cheddar, Vudu, VICE, Hearst Magazines, Newsy, Philo, Tubi and Xumo.  Marketers can use clypd's self-serve platform to define campaign targets, discover available inventory and measure campaign performance, which will complement Xandr Monetize on the publisher side.

Expansion and Authority
In its purchase of clypd, Xandr also gets the brain trust that has been focused on data-driven buying and selling for years.  Chief relationship officer Mark Mitchell, for example, has been building relationships with TV networks.  "When we started clypd, a ton of effort went into convincing sales leaders that the industry needed to begin to change," Mitchell says.  "We're now at the point where everyone sees the benefit of selling advanced audiences and market adoption is underway."

Chief research officer Pete Doe, in addition to his work at clypd, also chairs the ATSG (Advanced Target Standards Group), a consortium of TV networks, agencies and organizations that share their expertise to accelerate the use of advanced targets in the buying and selling of TV advertising.  The group forms guidelines to help buyers and sellers manage advanced audience deals and first-party data, and has established a set of calculation principles.  This ensures consistent and transparent advanced audience protocols, establishes advanced audience definitions and offers perspectives on data quality for advanced TV data sets and attribution.

Brands, agencies and media companies alike have to be agile to keep pace with emerging media trends today.  Xandr's acquisition of clypd not only helps to keep Xandr nimble, but it also enables the company to better consolidate its marketplace strengths for the future, whether through data, improving the buy/sell cycle, or contributing insight on industry guidelines.  Stay tuned for what's next.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Championing Television Targeting Through the ATSG

Sometimes the best way to advance initiatives is to band together a group of frenemies and form a consortium. In the case of ATSG, (Advanced Target Standards Group), Discovery, ESPN, Fox, Turner and Viacom shared their expertise to accelerate the use of advanced targets in the buying and selling of TV advertising.

The group was formed in 2016 when data -driven linear deals were fairly new. At the time, “all the participants recognized that there was a need for standard approaches and consistency in defining and measuring advanced audiences,” explained Pete Doe, Chief Research Officer, clypd who also leads the ATSG. “Since then we’ve grown to include representation from more media owners, agencies and CIMM.”

Since their inception, the group has deliverables in the following areas –

• Guidelines to help buyers and sellers manage advanced audience deals and first party data.
• Calculation Principles ensuring consistent and transparent advanced audience definitions and calculations.
• Pre-defined Advanced Audience Definitions.
• Perspectives on data quality for advanced TV data sets and Attribution.

The need for such a group is evident when you compare linear TV to digital. “Linear inventory is finite while digital is effectively infinite, so that leads to very different demand and supply and monetization,” noted Doe. But another key difference is measurement where linear TV with its human-based panel is a counterpoint to digital which is device driven with inferences about humans being drawn from observed online activity and big data matching.

“Typically, the assumption is that a served digital ad is seen by one person, but with television, co-viewing is common. As OTT continues to grow, measurement needs to reflect that more than one person is watching the IP-delivered content on the big screen. The best of both worlds has to be a hybrid measurement of big data sources reflecting device activity, informed by representative panel measurements of people,” concluded Doe.

The next steps for ATSG are to expand their membership to include other parts of the media ecosystem while continuing to work on cross-platform target definition consistency and guidelines on the reliability of advanced audience campaign delivery.

This article first appeared in Cynopsis.

The World of Data. Interview with Pete Doe of clypd

Pete Doe, Chief Research Officer, clypd, is an expert in data fusion and TV currency audience products both in the UK and in America. He moved to clypd from Nielsen where he helped launch their data fusion efforts, which has brought him great satisfaction. “Data fusion is no longer seen as something unusual or unacceptable,” he said.

In this fascinating interview, Pete talks about his work at clypd, programmatic, linear TV, the role of measurement and traditional research.

Charlene Weisler interviews Pete Doe who talks about his background:

CHARLENE WEISLER: What is the state of data fusion in the U.S. today?

Pete: Data fusion means a lot of different things to different people. What’s happened in the last decade is that data has come to us from all angles – not just in research but also generally in the population. We all walk around with cellphones and that is generating data every second of the day. The need to understand consumers through data has existed for decades but now there is so much more data available.  That means we need to integrate data to make sense of what consumers are doing.

Several years ago when life was simpler and you had one database measuring television audiences, you could probably get away with that if all you cared about was TV advertising. But now the world is a lot more complicated and so integration of data is a fact of life, rather than something that is seen as, maybe, a future interesting development. It’s here and now. So I think that there is an acceptance that you have to work with integrated data sets, whereas a few years ago people were questioning that. Then the question arises, ‘well what does that mean?’ If you integrate data sets, what data sets do you integrate? Who owns those data sets? What are the privacy concerns around that? What issues are there around coverage and research integrity? It is a very interesting world that we are living in now.

Charlene Weisler interviews Pete Doe who talks about Data:

CHARLENE: Tell me about your work at clypd. 

Pete: clypd is really exciting because for so long, TV has been bought and sold using age and gender. We are bringing automation and data to the buying and selling process, working primarily for the seller - and I think that makes us fairly unique because there is a lot of demand side automation that is happening – we’re helping media owners to make the best use of the inventory to reach the right people at the right time. We believe that if you can make TV advertising better targeted and more automated, then that is going to be good for the buyer, it’s going to be good for the seller an at the end of the day, it will be good for the viewer as well because they are going to see ads that are more relevant to them. In this ecosystem, everyone should win by using data in a smart way. 

CHARLENE : What is your definition of television?

Pete: That is a difficult question. Television, what it means to me, is sitting down with my family and it is more the shared experience whereas Digital is more of a personal thing. That said, I can sit down and watch YouTube videos with my daughter. I try and introduce her to music I like and she introduces me to music she likes. So it can also be a shared experience there too….

Charlene Weisler interviews Pete Doe who talks about linear TV and programmatic:

Charlene: I think it is a difficult question for many people to answer.

Pete: Yes it is.

Charlene: What is your definition of programmatic?

Pete: We define programmatic at clypd as having two elements – automation in the work flow and the use of data in decision-making. I think the origin of programmatic in digital and the use of programmatic in remnant inventory suggests bargain basement approach to advertising but that is not what it is about for us. clypd is primarily working with media owners to make better use of linear TV inventory. Many people think of programmatic as being primarily digital but what we are trying to do is to make the process of buying and selling traditional TV campaigns a more automated and data driven process than it has been up to now. 

Charlene Weisler interviews Pete Doe who looks ahead and makes some predicitons about the media landscape:

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com