Nielsen rival iSpot buys 605 as it bets on measurement outcomes driving TV currency

ISpot.tv is acquiring 605 in the first combination of contenders trying to end Nielsen's dominance of TV and cross-platform audience measurement.

Although iSpot.TV and 605 have been seeking certification from the U.S. Joint Industry Committee to measure and receive customer viewing data from much of the TV and streaming industry, iSpot founder and CEO Sean Muller said the companies are quite complementary, with the appeal driven largely by 605's strength in outcomes measurement from video buys. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Muller said all 85 employees of 605 would join iSpot, bringing its total employment to 464. 

ISpot has a customer base that’s historically been strongest among marketers and is focused more on comprehensive audience measurement both as a currency and to help media buyers evaluate the cost-effectiveness of their reach. 605, meanwhile, originated in 2016 as an outgrowth of Cablevision’s DataCo Ventures unit (prior to that cable provider being acquired by Europe’s Altice) and it gets most of its business from networks as a tool for selling outcomes-based deals, Muller said.

Walmart is also a signature 605 client, optimizing its own media buys based on its shopper data. For the most part, the business lines and customer bases of the two companies don’t overlap much, he said.

The acquisition means merging data sets from cable provider Charter combined with smart TV data from Vizio and LG, which brings iSpot to 82.7 million household devices under measurement, Muller said.

“The thing that has us really excited is their outcomes measurement,” Muller said. “People close to it know, but the market as a whole doesn’t, that 605 has some of the most sophisticated outcomes measurement capabilities being very quickly adopted by the sell side. We want to bring it to the buy side. So it’s complementary to everything we do.”

Muller added: “A big reason why we’re doing this is that we believe outcomes will be a major component of currency. We just think its importance is going to continue to increase, and more investments will be made in the outcomes side in the future than will be in the counting side.”

Also read: iSpot.tv integrates with YouTube data clean room

ISpot already connects linear and streaming viewership with web traffic and offline sales to attribute lifts to ad placements, Muller said. “What they’ve done really well is outcome measurement against third-party data sets, whether it’s CPG sales data from Catalina and other sources, auto sales data from Polk, location data from Places and other credit card, search and survey data.”

In an interview earlier this year, 605 CEO Tom Keaveney also described outcomes measurement from video ad exposures as his company’s strong suit. “You saw an ad for Nike. Did it result in a full-price purchase? You saw an ad for a QSR? Did you visit one of those QSRs subsequently?” he said. “I think it’s transformative of the industry because it provides real efficacy. Currency is a base level we need to transact. But there’s a way to look at what we’re doing and use tools to make them more predictive in the future.”

Kristin Dolan, founder and former CEO of 605, became CEO of AMC Networks last year, and in a statement said, “I can’t wait to see the things this powerful combination of technology and talent can achieve and bring to a growing array of clients and partners under iSpot’s leadership.”

The deal makes iSpot look relatively strong in making an acquisition as rivals have been pulling back some, particularly with Nielsen having announced last week that it will lay off 9% of its workforce. VideoAmp, another rival, announced a much smaller headcount reduction late last year. ISpot has received the most recent major capital infusion in the industry, a $325 million investment by Goldman Sachs in April 2022. This is the latest in a series of deals by iSpot that also includes the Ace Metrix syndicated creative ratings business in 2021, the Tunity app to help with measuring out-of-home audiences in 2022 and the lead role in a $16 million investment in TVision, whose panel measures in-home attention and co-viewing of video.