How ACR Data Helps LG Ads Solutions Reach The Unreachable

“The inability to accurately target and measure has always been the bane of linear TV advertising. You have the eyeballs, but you can't target and measure them, so you don't know how well it is working. CTV advertising cannot be better than regular linear TV advertising if you do not have the ability to target and measure.” says Raghu Kodige, President of LG Ads Solutions. “Every brand makes their own decision based on some internal assumptions about how those linear channels are working. Whereas with CTV, because it's digital, you can both measure and target if you have ACR data,” adds Justin Fromm, LG Ads Solutions’ Head of Research.

ALAN WOLK (AW): How does having your own ACR data help make advertising on LG TVs better?

RAGHU KODIGE (RK): Having our own ACR data is very critical. It differentiates the OEMs who have this data from all other players in the CTV space. You can buy CTV inventory today directly by going to a publisher. But if they don't have any first party targeting data, you're not getting the best use of CTV. 

AW: Can you give me an example of how that would work with LG?

RK: When someone works with us, most often they want to reach people that are hard to reach on linear TV. That's the number one ask we get: “How do I reach the unreachable?”  The unreachable typically are people who are light TV viewers, or people who are watching only streaming content. They could also be people who are only watching sports on TV, but not anything else. 

AW: How does ACR data help you to “reach the unreachable?”

RK: In something close to real time we can say, “Has this person been exposed to any TV ad in the last 24 hours? And if so, how many times? Did they skip those ads or did they actually watch them to completion?”

There are all these things that come into play that can help an advertiser pick the right audience. And then on top of it, they can now add measurement. What is the total reach they got, as a result of whatever targeting they're using? They can also find out the average frequency, and then put a universal cap on the frequency. Finally, we can take a look at what actually happened. Did the reach strategy work in their favor?  Did they actually get more people to come to the website thanks to the incremental each strategy? Or should they be doubling down on a certain segment and increasing frequency, hitting that same target with more ads. That’s going to vary a lot based on the vertical that they’re in, but it’s something we can help them to figure out.

AW: LG Ads frequently refers to ACR data as your own first party data. Can you elaborate on that?

Justin Fromm: We look at it in terms of exclusivity. We have exclusive access to the data from LG televisions -  one of the most important windows into consumer behavior. Digital has been so focused on things like purchase signals, and intent signals devoid of context. TV data, specifically ACR data, is one of the most valuable indicators of consumer behavior because it offers a window into how consumers spend their time.

ACR gives you a window into that TV behavior that we never had. Since the advent of the internet, the goal for TV measurement was second by second, person-level data. Now, thanks to ACR, we actually have it. 

ACR data gives us this level of intimate knowledge about a consumer which we can then share with brands for targeting, much in the same way that they use their own first party data. The beauty of ACR is that we can use it for targeting on both linear and streaming, which is key as that is going to be TV’s reality for the foreseeable future.

AW: Where do you see ACR fitting into the measurement platforms of the future?

RK: For so many years there has been an artificial divide between digital measurement and TV. Even though it's the same advertiser trying to reach the same end consumer, you’ve had two completely different types of measurements. One was a 50,000 person panel from Nielsen measuring and giving some high level impression and reach numbers, and the other, from say, Google and Facebook, was measuring every single impression, every pixel on every website 

That bridge, that divide is going to be gone because of ACR, because what ACR does is it makes the TV behave exactly like digital. So that every impression is measured, every event can be tracked. And you will be able to plan using that data, you will be able to do post analysis using that data, and literally the same groups within a company can do the planning for both. 

This gap at agencies between the TV buying teams and the digital buying teams-- all that is going to go away. We will have a uniform set of principles that will apply to both digital and TV because they are going to be one and the same. That's going to take a few more years, but soon enough people will look at TV as just another medium. Like today, people don't distinguish between how they buy on mobile versus desktop. Soon enough people will be planning all that video inventory together, whether it is on mobile or desktop or TV, and they will allocate budgets based on efficiencies and not just pulling a number out of thin air. So that's what's going to happen in the future.

This interview is an excerpt from TVREV’s new report Getting Granular: How ACR Data Is Winning The TV Measurement Game. Download your copy today to read the full report.