Television is quickly becoming the next piece in the offline attribution puzzle. This is happening as programmatic ad buying grows in television, and as the art of attribution continues to improve and span platforms. This notably goes beyond just broadcast and taps into the prevalence of streaming and OTT.
The latest in this progression is NinthDecimal’s partnership with the Vizio-owned Inscape. Announced yesterday, the deal will let NinthDecimal measure the impact of TV and video streaming ads on offline conversions and revenue lifts. This is meant to monitor efficacy and, in turn, inform media planning.
Importantly, this measures foot-traffic outcomes of TV ad campaigns, as opposed to other KPIs and proxies. That’s possible through NinthDecimal’s existing capability and network to measure offline foot traffic through its network of 200 million U.S. consumers in almost 10 billion locations per day.
We’re also detecting a trend for this particular flavor of online to offline (O2O) attribution. NinthDecimal has done other such partnerships including Roku, to join its measurement partner program. The company reports that its TV business grew 400 percent last year and is on track to double this year.
Beefing up capabilities in TV ad attribution also aligns with Ninth Decimal president David Staas’ insights on “multi-touch attribution” at Place Conference ’19. Not to be confused with multi-channel attribution, this examines granular factors in the growing slate of media that impacts consumers.
There are other players doing similar integrations to connect the dots between television advertising and offline activity. One example is Foursquare’s which did a similar deal with Inscape last year. PlaceIQ, Simlifi and a few other offline attribution companies have also done work with TV-to-offline tracking.
Overall, this is a key trend: Television and streaming video are of course top reach/impression plays, but have traditionally missed out on trackability of digital advertising. That’s started to shift in the past five years with the rise of programmatic advertising, digital streaming and offline attribution technologies.
Expect a more market development as competition, differentiation and overall capabilities continue to grow in the location intelligence and offline attribution competitive landscape. We’ll be watching.
