iSpot Buys Into TVision to Boost Ad Currency Challenge

Cross-platform audience measurement company iSpot.tv has made a strategic investment in television and CTV viewer engagement specialist TVision, as part of a $16m round.

TVision provides second-by-second, person-level data about viewing of both linear and streaming TV, including who's watching, what they're watching, and how much attention they are paying. The firm is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Boston and Tokyo.

The funding was supported by SIG Capital, Accomplice, and Golden Ventures. Launched a decade ago in Bellevue, WA and financed by its own succession of VC inputs, iSpot offers a real-time platform measuring all phases of the TV advertising lifecycle from creative testing to audience verification, through to business outcomes and brand impact, with coverage of linear, time-shifted, VOD , streaming and Out of Home environments. The company has been building its claim as a rival ad currency to Nielsen, and in January was selected alongside Comscore and VideoAmp as a partner by WarnerMedia. In April, investment bank Goldman Sachs acquired a $325m minority stake in the company.

iSpot says the investment 'deepens the ties between two companies with extensive contracts for new currency endeavors', and is recognition that TVision's patented technology for passively measuring people in a room and their eyes-on-screen attention to ads and programming across both TV and CTV 'has gained adoption'. The deal builds on a long-standing relationship between iSpot and TVision to measure co-viewing and person-level metrics for linear TV, and gives iSpot exclusive use of the use the TVision panel 'to accurately personify CTV audiences for ratings across 900+ streaming apps and publishers'. iSpot CEO and founder Sean Muller will join the TVision board.

Kelly Abcarian, EVP Measurement & Impact at NBCUniversal says of the deal, 'Combining iSpot's massive panel with TVision's modern approach to counting real people helps advertisers measure co-viewing across linear and CTV with greater accuracy across households and diverse audiences. A cross-platform currency, based on the exact ad and powered by fast and accurate co-viewing metrics, will also bring a completely new approach to valuing premium content'. According to TVision CEO Yan Liu (pictured), 'Future video currencies that leverage both census and panel data will provide the industry with a more accurate understanding of who is really watching TV regardless of how that content gets to the screen. TVision has pioneered a new approach and put the infrastructure in place to transform how co-viewing and personification of audiences work for the TV industry. Together with great customers and the latest strategic investment round from iSpot, we're positioned to help fuel a new, more transparent, and open TV ecosystem'.

Web sites: www.ispot.tv and www.tvision.com .