TV advertising analytics provider iSpot.tv wants to become the default platform for advertisers who want to get a better view of how their ads are doing on Twitter and Facebook. The new offering is the last step in iSpot.tv’s plans to provide reporting that mixes the real-time nature of knowing when and where an ad appears, with exactly what people are saying about it on social media.
The first step in that direction was creating a directory of TV ads on its own iSpot.tv site, which would allow users to find practically any ad that had been aired. The second step was to build out a real-time tracking system that watched almost 80 different networks and tracked when every individual ad appeared and against which piece of programming.
With that information, iSpot.tv already had a robust solution to provide brands, networks, and agencies detailed information about who was spending how much on advertising that ran where. That information gives a pretty good snapshot of what the competitive landscape looks like.
But what if advertisers want to know how well those ads are performing? And what people think about them?
Well, iSpot.tv is introducing that piece of its platform next, combining what it knows about when and where ads appear with a huge dataset of digital social signals. By plugging into Facebook and Twitter, as well as being able to monitor search queries, gives the company enough data to be able to figure out how viewers came upon that ad.
Let’s say you’re watching NFL football on Sunday and you tweet about that Bud Light ‘Ramsey’ commercial — given when you tweeted it, iSpot.tv can probably make a reasonable guess as to which network you were watching it on, and during which commercial break. Furthermore, the company can do contextual analysis to find out what you thought about it, and then compare that opinion with the millions of other Twitterers just a-tweeting away.
“This is Bluefin Labs on steroids,” says iSpot.tv founder Sean Muller, referring to the social analytics platform that had been acquired by Twitter earlier this year. While Bluefin had a pretty good grip on what people were saying about brands and TV shows, iSpot.tv thinks it has a unique offering thanks to all the real-time data it already has on where and when ads appear.
Advertisers spent approximately $6.6 billion on 1.3 million airings of nearly 8,000 TV spots last month tracked by the iSpot.tv, the company said. Combine that with 158 million online plays, 30 million searches, 2.1 million Facebook actions and more than 450,000 Twitter mentions, and you’ve got a lot of information to help make decisions about which ads are resonating with viewers.
iSpot.tv has raised $5.575 million from Madrona Venture Group, TL Ventures, and a bunch of Demand Media alums.
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