Samba TV Acquires Screen6, Forming First Global OTT Measurement Solution

By MTS Staff Writer On Dec 20, 2018

Technology Platform for Understanding Audience Across All Devices

As the audience for video splits across devices and consumer viewing behavior shifts from linear TV to streaming video, the ability to understand, measure and deduplicate audiences has become critical for both advertisers and programmers. Samba TV, the leader in next-generation TV analytics, announced it has acquired Screen6, the industry’s only real-time cross-device identity resolution platform.

Samba’s real-time TV viewership data combined with Screen6 technology for cross-device identification provides advertisers, publishers, and platforms immediate access to Samba’s suite of cross-screen measurement solutions to optimize reach and mitigate excess frequency of brand messages.

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This groundbreaking combination aims to limit repetitive advertising across TV and streaming video. Advertisers can now extend reach, optimize frequency and drive conversion with a unified view of advertising across digital, over-the-top and linear TV. With the opportunity to adapt campaigns in a timely fashion, not only does this improve returns on ad spend, it reduces waste and dramatically improves consumer experience.

More than $220 billion is spent on US TV and digital video advertising worldwide with no controls on ad frequency between platforms. Named by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in America two years in a row, Samba TV helps the world’s largest brands engage TV audiences across screens and provide a unified view of their advertising campaigns across marketing channels.

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“Accurate cross-platform measurement has been a significant challenge for the industry. We continue to see new devices introduced each year, and the mix of viewing platforms continues to change,” said Brett Sappington, Senior Director of Research, Parks Associates. “Advertisers have long wanted a detailed, accurate picture of viewership in order to optimize their ad spend.” According to Parks Associates the number of hours of video viewed on a mobile phone increased by 55% from 2015 to 2017.

Built by a team in Amsterdam composed of engineers and data scientists, the Screen6 cross-device graphing solution leads the industry in scale and accuracy, processing more than 50 billion inputs per day. Some of its clients have validated the accuracy of the Screen6 graph with deterministic data and seen accuracy higher than 95% when compared to the truth set. The company maintains live daily graphs in 12 countries across 3 continents. While its competitors have abandoned European markets, Screen6 was embraced by numerous clients in recent months for its privacy-compliant approach.

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“We are ecstatic to join Samba, a company that holds similar values and shares our dedication to innovation,” said David de Jong, co-founder and CEO of Screen6. “Together, we will be able to extend the vision of an open, real-time cross device identity solution.”

“Integrated with conversion analytics, every brand will need to carefully optimize reach and frequency across legacy and emerging channels mitigating the risk of destroying brands from over-exposure,” said Samba TV CEO and co-founder Ashwin Navin. “The currency for brand advertising in the future will be a solution that can programmatically adapt campaigns in real-time, tied to how consumers shift between platforms throughout their day.”