In mid-June, New York-based “advanced TV provider” Simulmedia lifted the curtain on what it is touting as “a first-of-its-kind program that gives agencies and advertisers the power to run advanced TV campaigns against strategic audiences and get total transparency on media outputs, marketing outcomes, competitive insights and pricing.”
That program, dubbed Transparent TV, has just added premium OTT inventory from its linear TV partners.
“Transparent TV with the addition of premium OTT is unique to the industry,” says Dave Morgan, Simulmedia’s CEO. “Until now, we have mostly seen digital video platforms add small amounts of linear TV inventory to their offerings and call it ‘cross-platform.’ We are starting with a foundation in national, linear TV, delivering hundreds of millions of viewers across more than 80 national networks. Now, we’re complementing it with additional reach from those networks’ streaming video products, which audiences consume over multiple content platforms and devices.”
Video advertisers will now have a one-stop shop to plan, buy and activate integrated video campaigns on national linear TV and premium streaming video while getting unparalleled transparency, automation and control.
Simulmedia has developed deep integrations in audience data, targeting and delivery coordination—including 50 premium OTT streaming networks for inventory. The company has partnered with SpotX for technology, comScore for ad measurement, as well as with Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings and with NBCUniversal’s CFlight TV data measurement framework to better integrate their linear and OTT campaigns.
“Creating currency-grade cross-platform solutions are a top priority for us, as shown by our recent launch of comScore Campaign Ratings for video ad measurement,” says Dan Hess, chief product officer at comScore. “Our collaboration with valued partners like Simulmedia enables us to provide transparency and insight to an even broader base of media buyers and sellers, ultimately driving smarter decisions and reducing marketplace friction.”
Simulmedia intends to adopt NBCUniversal’s CFlight framework because it combines OTT ad inventory together with linear TV in campaigns. “We believe that it is the best framework that we have seen so far for rationalizing and counting premium video ad impressions across multiple platforms from a single media owner, and we believe that it has a real chance to be adopted across the entire TV and premium video industry,” says Morgan. “NBCUniversal’s Linda Yaccarino and her team have exhibited real leadership in creating CFlight and offering it up as an open-source, cross-company standard.”
CFlight incorporates the industry’s most widely-accepted measurement sources by platform, including Nielsen, comScore, Moat and others. Included in this composite measurement is co-viewing on OTT platforms where measurement is enabled.
“More and more advertisers want to buy linear TV and premium streaming video campaigns together, and they want to do it at scale with as much simplicity, automation and transparency as possible,” says Dave Smith, founder and chairman of San Francisco-based Mediasmith. “We are happy to see Simulmedia step up to deliver a truly integrated and scaled linear and streaming TV solution.”
“The tactical flexibility of the OTT medium is a natural complement to Simulmedia’s core competencies in strategic linear TV planning and activation,” says Randy Cooke, vice president, enterprise solutions at SpotX. “As the world’s largest programmatic platform across OTT and CTV, SpotX is excited to provide Simulmedia with the tools necessary to seamlessly activate OTT campaigns across programmers and MVPDs on the SpotX platform.”
“As the industry continues to demand greater transparency, independent measurement that underpins Simulmedia’s converged buys is a crucial component of ensuring there is trust in the marketplace,” says Jessica Hogue, SVP Digital Client Solutions, Nielsen. “We are excited to work alongside Simulmedia and use our robust measurement footprint to serve these needs.”
“Simulmedia’s move into digital video comes at a time when consumption habits are shifting between traditional linear television and streaming devices and connected TVs,” adds Mr. Morgan. “Now, Simulmedia will enable advertisers to increase their reach in premium video content to younger ‘cord-cutter’ and ‘cord-never’ audiences, which are harder to reach on traditional TV. Moreover, Simulmedia will empower television networks to capture a larger portion of digital video ad budgets, which are increasingly being allocated to Facebook, Google and Amazon today.”
This enhancement bolsters Simulmedia’s linear TV ad platform, which provides integrated planning, activation, analytics and optimization. The platform also allows for targeting and measurement using consistent first and third-party audience segments across all national TV with automated post-campaign report aggregation across all networks.
