How 605 is helping advertisers, networks, and MVPDs tackle addressable TV

Advertisers have for years clamored for more addressable TV inventory. While this inventory has certainly become more readily available, planning and activation is difficult, especially because addressable goes hand in hand with more data. This is where 605, an independent TV measurement company launched and run by former Cablevision executive Kristin Dolan, comes in.

The four-year-old company is trying to help brands, marketers, TV networks, and MVPDs alike navigate an increasing amount of viewer data to work with in order to drive performance. Through partnerships with device manufacturers, automatic content recognition companies, and cable operators, 605 has a multi-source viewership dataset covering more than 21 million US households across all 210 DMAs. Importantly, much of this data is 100% deterministic, giving 605 a household-level understanding of viewing behavior.

605 has used the Democratic primary debates to showcase the power of its data and the company, for example, was able to tell clients that on the first night of the debates, the second commercial break was the best performer of all the ad breaks and that during the second debate viewers were more likely to be high income and 62%  more likely than the general population to be upscale buyers.

For more on 605, its debate data, and how it’s helping clients better understand advanced TV, we spoke with Gaurav Shirole, Senior Vice President of Client Analytics & Product Strategy, 605.

Found Remote: How can 605’s data from the first few debates help marketers maximize ad spend moving forward?

Gaurav Shirole: 605’s data can serve a number of purposes – it all depends on an individual marketer’s strategic approach.For any tentpole event, such as the Democratic Debates, 605’s viewership data allows marketers to understand both which audiences were drawn to the event and—potentially even more importantly—which viewers were not.

If a marketer is already committed to airing an advertisement during the event, 605 is able to answer their tactical questions—like which debate moments or commercial breaks drove the highest audience engagement—as well as provide strategically important information, such as attribution among households exposed to the event that later took a specific action like visiting a brand website or making a purchase.

Even for marketers who didn’t invest in the event, 605 is able to provide valuable information via our library of attributes and our unique ability to match custom audience data to determine if the audience that tuned in would have been a valuable target. In addition to enabling marketers to make informed, strategic plans for future tentpole events, 605 also has the ability to follow debate viewers elsewhere on the dial and determine efficient places to reach the same audience.

FR: How does 605’s debate data differ from data of other measurement and analytics companies?

Shirole: It is the largest deterministic multi-source linear TV data-set (including SmartTV ACR and MVPD STB).

This scale, combined with our deterministic household-level matching via SafeHavens, uniquely enables us to drill down into smaller audience segments without losing measurement precision.

For example, we have the ability to conduct political analyses by focusing exclusively on the composition of viewership among Obama-Trump ‘flipping’ counties within Swing States. We can estimate a telecast’s unique reach into specific audiences relevant for a category; valuable information to both marketers and programmers.

FR; What are some standout insights from the first few debates that could help a marketer’s strategy outside of political spend?

Shirole: For specific clients, we are able to provide an estimate of the unique incremental reach (per dollar) of impressions during the debate, relative to their overall campaign and other specific high-impact placements. In layman’s terms, we would easily be able to tell a client, for instance: of households tuned into either night of the Democratic debates, what percentage had they already reached as well as which of the programs they aired advertisements on had the highest overlap with that debate audience.

From a generic, consumer marketing perspective, it was clear that viewers of July’s Detroit debate trended higher-income and were more highly educated.  Not surprising given the content, these viewers tend to be very Democratic primary voters.

The tune-in data shows that on the first night of the debates, the second commercial break was the best performer of all the ad breaks.  During the second night, the commercial break that followed opening statements (and a brief set of initial topics) better retained audiences, garnering the highest viewership of any ad break.      

Highly-indexed viewers of this particular debate were also:

• 1.36x more likely than the general population to donate to health institutions
• 1.21x more likely than the general population to have an interest in health and fitness
• 1.05x more likely than the general population to be homeowners
• More likely to be high income and 1.62x more likely than the general population to be upscale buyers

FR: 605 has deterministic data from 21 million U.S. households. How does this shift the conversation with clients from broad, upper funnel buys to more direct response, sales-driven ones?

Shirole: It works both ways. 605 helps brand advertisers quantify the effects of their brand buys on outcomes, while helping direct response marketers understand the brand effects of their campaigns. The large source of TV data enables both types of advertisers to dig into specific questions around responsive audiences.

FR: How is 605 helping sales teams of distributors and MVPDs?

Shirole: 605 provides tools for processing and integrating device-level viewership data with audience attributes to enable more efficient selling of local and national Pay TV inventory. For instance, we worked with Charter to develop AudienceApp, their TV planning and analytics tool, which can identify pockets of inventory where an advertiser has the highest chance of reaching and resonating with their target audience. Not only can programmers or networks use such a tool to monetize their long-tail inventory, but advertisers can use it to make sure they’re getting in front of the right people – it’s the best of both worlds.

605’s attribution analysts are major proponents of using addressable TV as the basis for the most precise and accurate TV measurement platform, given the ability to conduct randomized controlled trials and isolate incrementality effects in a real-world laboratory environment.

In addition to working with advertisers who purchase Pay TV inventory, 605 offers services to Pay TV providers for third-party attribution reporting across major verticals, including tune-in.