This essay is adapted from a conversation at Advertising Week New York in 2023.
Right now, Hollywood is on strike. The talent, the studios, the streamers, the broadcasters — we are all existentially linked. We all want to work. And while a lot of the conversation has centered on AI, I think that is just a layer of the issue. The underlying tension is about transparency and data. You cannot work well together when the information is locked away.
If you could think of anything that you get more of the more you give — what would it be? Love is a good answer. But I would propose that the answer we need right now is data. I believe our industry will be better off if we are more open with our data and more willing to share it. The insights you get back when you open up will be far more profound than what you get by holding on. That is really what is at the core of the tension in media right now. Everyone is holding on to their data. We are here to say: let it go. Open it up. Let people benefit from it. Because openness builds better relationships, more trust, more transparency — and I think that is what brings this industry back to work.
The Promise That Digital Broke
The instinct many businesses have had is that we are all data-starved. We thought digital would unlock entirely new data sets, that we would be swimming in information. But in fact, that data has become heavily siloed. It is difficult for people to get their hands on it, to feel confident in their position — wherever they are in the value chain.
What We Built and Why
When we started Samba TV, the term ACR — automatic content recognition — did not exist. We were very interested in television because that is where people spent hours a day. Billions of people around the world, and there was so little understanding of how they watched. We thought: we really need to crack the code. How do we understand TV better, and how do we understand its relationship with other platforms that seem to have so much more data — digital, social, everything else? If we could bring television up to that level and then understand it holistically, that would be a really exciting thing to do.
So we invented technology that could understand, at the level of a show or even an individual ad, what a device was being used for — what people were watching. Then we married that with other data sets. That is what the industry now calls ACR. Today you will not find a TV currency that does not include some form of ACR data. That is very different from where we started, over a decade ago.
Our technology is now integrated into the operating systems of twenty-four different television brands that ship all over the world. When you buy a new TV and set it up, one of the steps is to opt in or opt out of Samba. When you opt in, it allows us to understand how that device is being used. We establish a pseudonymous ID for the device so we can build a picture of viewership — and in turn drive better recommendations, more relevant advertising, and a wealth of data for the industry to take advantage of.
Beyond Reach: The Outcomes Era
For its entire existence, the TV industry has had to rely on complex methodology to count how many people watch shows — whether they come over the air, through cable, or now through streaming. I think that problem is going to get solved. There is good innovation happening there. But where the industry needs to focus next is on impact. Once you have been exposed to media, what kind of impact is it having on behavior? What are people more likely to buy? How is it influencing a brand’s return on its investment?
That is where we have been spending most of our resources. The future of currency is going to be a combination of not just how many people saw my programming or saw my ad, but what effect it had on their buying behaviors and their lives.
We announced a partnership with Affinity, a credit card data company with purchase data from a hundred and ninety million people, made available in a privacy-compliant way. The idea is to explore the relationship between what people watch and what they buy. Think about what that means for retail, travel, entertainment — anywhere a credit card transaction is what you are ultimately trying to drive. If you could have those data sets speak to each other in real time and allow for optimization as a result, I think it is going to be a huge value unlock for the business.
Take a retailer like Sephora. They would like to know the relationship between their ads — paid media spots in traditional television, connected television, digital — and how those touchpoints combine to get people into a store. How does that relationship compare to their competitive set? Those are the types of questions we can now explore and reveal so that a client can optimize where and how they reach people and drive the outcome they are after.
The TikTok Revelation
The ways you can build a brand today are so diverse. One thing we have been excited about is bringing our data into some of the biggest media platforms and walled gardens. TikTok is a great example. There is a massive groundswell of activity and viewership happening there, and to be able to help advertisers understand the effect of branding on TikTok — and understand TikTok relative to other ways you can build your brand — has been something we are really proud to do.
What we found is striking. When you think of TikTok as a streaming video service, it turns out to be a remarkably effective way to promote other streaming services. It has had massive impact on the entertainment industry. We have seen triple-digit lift in consumption for shows that are promoted on TikTok. Whether it is Netflix, Amazon, Disney, or any other service — that audience is deeply interested in media. Launching a new show on TikTok has become a huge source of value. Some of those shows become cultural memes, and the data now proves what many suspected: social momentum translates directly into viewership.
The Next Generation
The exciting and challenging thing about where television is headed is that the viewing experience for some of the biggest broadcast and live events is going to be very different in the coming years. Think about what Amazon is doing with football, or YouTube TV. When you can change the viewing angles of the sport you are watching, focus on your player or your team, and see ads that are personalized and addressable — that breaks traditional ACR. You cannot make simple comparisons between what is on the device and a reference server when every screen looks different.
We are already on the third generation of our technology. We are thinking about AI as it relates to its ability to predict and infer. Is this program — even though it may look different from one viewer to the next — the same thing as what we think it is? That is where AI could be really powerful. We had a client tell us they are going to spend more on their Formula One sponsorship — putting their logo on the car, on the track — than they will on paid media. And they have no way to measure how much reach that gives them or how effective it is relative to other forms of advertising. Our AI could be a great way to understand that investment.
The True North
Our true north is an environment where you sit down to television after a long day and whatever you see feels extremely personal and relevant to you. Shows that reflect your interests, your mood at any given moment — whether you need a pick-me-up and something to laugh about, or you want to get immersed in something with a deep plot line. We want to bring you more of that. And we want the ads to feel like things you actually care about and would like to know more about.
This is a moment when we should not be comfortable with data that is siloed. We should not be comfortable with a single data set from one device or one publisher as a source of truth. It is time to bring a level playing field to understanding media holistically — and to demand it from every one of your media vendors. Make sure you feel like you are getting the confidence, the clarity, and the transparency that you deserve.