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<\/a>Comscore<\/b><\/p>\nFounded: <\/b>1999<\/span><\/p>\n Comscore has been Nielsen\u2019s longest-running rival in America, providing the most direct competition for Nielsen\u2019s ratings system. Unlike the other companies on this list, Comscore was founded long before the internet shifted TV viewing across a range of devices and timeframes.<\/span><\/p>\n But Comscore did grow up in the digital era, and has arguably been quicker than Nielsen to modernise its TV ratings system.<\/span><\/p>\n Comscore offers both national and local TV measurement in the US, drawing data from set-top boxes from cable, satellite, and vMVPD providers. Comscore says it\u2019s able to draw data from 75 million TV screens in over 35 million households in the US. It also licenses data from third-party companies including Inscape and Samba TV (featured further down this list) for insight into CTV viewing.<\/span><\/p>\n One of Comscore\u2019s key differentiators from Nielsen in recent years has been its focus on \u2018personification\u2019 – whereby Comscore assigns viewing to an individual within a household, rather than just the overall household. To do this, Comscore combines data on the demographic makeup of the households it\u2019s able to measure with its viewing data, and uses Bayesian statistics to deduce the probability of each household member watching a particular piece of content.<\/span><\/p>\n More recently the company launched \u2018Comscore Everywhere\u2019, which it says will offer a deduplicated view of media consumption and audience intelligence across media and screens – meaning linear and connected TV, but also digital and social video. Comscore is still working out how to fit all of these pieces together into one metric, but will ultimately measure deduplicated reach and frequency across screens.<\/span><\/p>\n Founded: <\/b>2014<\/span><\/p>\n Los Angeles-based VideoAmp is one of the best established companies on this list, reaching a valuation of $1.4 billion last October, fuelled by a series of sizable funding rounds.<\/span><\/p>\n VideoAmp says it is able to measure across traditional TV, streaming video, and digital media, which it does by connecting up different data sources including set-top box data, automatic content recognition (ACR) data, and panel data from third parties, as well as data from smart TV manufacturers and MVPDs.<\/span><\/p>\n VideoAmp then forms all this data into a \u2018comingled\u2019 deduplicated dataset, and models it to the US census, which the company says gives it a reach equal to the entire reachable US population.<\/span><\/p>\n The company has been clear in its ambitions to offer a strong alternative to Nielsen over the past year. VideoAmp is working on an alternative TV currency, and says it has five of the six biggest agency holding groups taking part in tests.<\/span><\/p>\n Founded: <\/b>2007 &<\/span> 2012<\/span><\/p>\n The newest tie-up in the TV measurement space after Innovid announced a deal to buy TVSquared for $160 million yesterday, Innovid says the combined offering will create a \u201ccurrency-grade\u201d cross-screen measurement offering.<\/span><\/p>\n Innovid at its core is an ad server, but has been building out its measurement capabilities over the past few years on top of its ad serving tech, giving it insight across the CTV space.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s measurement capabilities will be significantly strengthened with the addition of TVSquared, which itself was already a significant player in the space.<\/span><\/p>\n TVSquared was launched with the idea of bringing performance insights to TV advertising, at a time when advertisers were still largely relying on ratings data which was delivered long after an ad had actually aired.<\/span><\/p>\n The company has evolved over time and now describes itself as a unified, always-on platform that measures impressions, reach, and outcomes across linear and digital TV.<\/span><\/p>\n TVSquared\u2019s data sources include set-top boxes, smart TVs and ACR systems, as well as impression level data from CTV channels and first-party audience data from partnered publishers.<\/span><\/p>\n Third-party audiences and outcome data are also layered in, the latter of which includes online and offline sales, in-store and physical location visits, and web\/app activity. All of this is combined with a combination of deterministic matching and modeling.<\/span><\/p>\n The company says it covers 150 million households globally, and sees over 25 billion ad impressions each month.<\/span><\/p>\n Founded: <\/b>2012<\/span><\/p>\n iSpot.tv is one of the early winners of Nielsen\u2019s fall from grace, having been chosen by US broadcaster NBCUniversal to provide alternative ratings measurement in a multi-year deal.<\/span><\/p>\n The company uses smart TV and set-top box ACR integrations to measure across traditional linear and CTV viewing, claiming a total reach of over 51 million TVs and set-top boxes. iSpot.tv combines airing data with ACR data to provide an overview of when and where each creative aired, alongside metrics like total impressions.<\/span><\/p>\n iSpot.tv provides attribution, using a variety of techniques to tie outcomes to individual impressions. The company uses pixels on websites and home IP addresses to match TV impressions to online activity, while using mobile location and point of sale (POS) data for offline KPIs.<\/span><\/p>\n Another selling point for iSpot is its use of survey data to measure audiences\u2019 feelings towards individual creative, measuring emotion and attention-based metric like likeability, watchability, and desire.<\/span><\/p>\n Founded: <\/b>2008<\/span><\/p>\n Samba TV launched in 2008 under the name Flingo, designed to facilitate interactivity and personalisation on TV sets through software built into TVs and set top boxes. The company received financial backing from big names on both the buy and sell-sides including Disney, IPG, and Liberty Global.<\/span><\/p>\n Samba\u2019s ACR tech is embedded in 24 smart TV brands including LG, Sony, Sharp, and Panasonic, which it uses to create its panel, with a household device map used to deduplicate data and US census data used to normalise the panel.<\/span><\/p>\n Samba also uses its SambaID, built off the back of its acquisition of cross-device attribution company Screen6 which it acquired in 2019, which uses a mix of deterministic data and probabilistic algorithms to link devices within households. This can then be used for attribution, mapping activity on various devices to TV ad impressions.<\/span><\/p>\n And with broadcasters and advertisers reassessing their TV measurement partners, Samba TV is vocally supporting adoption of multiple currencies across the industry, rather than pushing to establish one new overarching currency to replace traditional ratings.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>VideoAmp<\/b><\/p>\n<\/a>Innovid + TVSquared<\/b><\/p>\n<\/a>iSpot.tv<\/b><\/p>\n<\/a>Samba TV<\/b><\/p>\n