Roku and Nielsen have entered into a strategic alliance which they say will help shape the future of media measurement and TV advertising in a streaming-first market.
It will see Roku acquire Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising (AVA) business, which includes Nielsen’s video automatic content recognition (ACR) and dynamic ad insertion (DAI) technologies. The acquisition will accelerate Roku’s launch of an end-to-end DAI solution with TV programmers.
The alliance will also see the two companies integrate complementary Nielsen ad and content measurement products into the Roku platform and further advance Nielsen ONE, the company’s cross-media measurement solution.
Commenting on the development, Louqman Parampath, VP of product management at Roku, said: “Tens of billions of dollars continue to be spent annually on traditional TV advertising.
“Combining Nielsen’s AVA technology with Roku’s innovative ad tech and scale will enable us to deliver the benefits of TV streaming advertising to traditional TV. Roku will bring the promise of DAI to the market for the first time ever at scale — providing better targeting and measurement for advertisers, creating easy integration and additional revenue opportunities for programmers’ ad sales teams, and improving the TV experience for viewers. We’re also excited to become a key strategic partner for Nielsen in their new cross-media measurement products, and jointly drive toward greater transparency and accuracy in TV streaming measurement”.
Roku and Nielsen have already worked closely together for a number of years. The two companies will now leverage Total Ad Ratings (TAR) on the Roku platform. Specifically, Roku’s media sales and ad-buying platform, OneView, will natively integrate Nielsen “always on” Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) for advertisers. Roku will also enable publishers to implement Nielsen Digital Content Ratings (DCR).
Scott N. Brown, GM, Audience Measurement, Nielsen, added: “The measurement of ads and content on Roku devices will accelerate the path to a single, deduplicated cross-media currency.
“As Roku brings the power of dynamic ad insertion to all forms of TV, we’re excited to help monetize the addressable market by measuring smart TV as a currency, which Nielsen can do at scale”.
The collaboration with Roku will substantially expand the footprint of smart TVs and other devices, nearing 100 million in total, in which Nielsen can enable media sellers and buyers to measure and better monetise addressable advertising.
The transaction is expected to close in Q2 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.
