Inscape's Zeev Neumeier Welcomes TV to the Age of the Impression

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We’ve got more ways than ever to advertise, and, as TV and digital video move ever closer, that means we’ve got a measurement problem as well.

Enter addressable TV advertising, which uses a new measurement spec that Inscape SVP of Product Zeev Neumeier points out might look a little familiar to digital video folks: impressions.

Digital video’s bread and butter is the impression, which is often more analogous to TV “reach” figures that few except TV ratings wonks care about. TV, though, still typically guarantees ads based on gross ratings points (GRPs, to the uninitiated), which come in the form of an average minute audience.

But with addressable TV, digital video-esque targeting is possible. “GRP’s are not going to cut it when everything’s potentially addressable,” Neumeier says. Welcome to the Age of the Impression.

Here’s a transcript of Neumeier’s answer to our question of how addressable is being measured:

Addressable really is an impressions-based measurement. The measurement spec is just coming out—now, anybody can read it, and it's a snooze over reader because it really looks a whole lot like digital video. Funny where that came from. Because this really is digital video. It's being overlaid on top of linear.

So we, as Inscape, selling linear data for living and enabling a digital impression, [we] really understand what those two things come together.

But the measurement of addressable really makes the television industry, whether they like it or not, step into the next century. GRP's are not going to cut it when everything's potentially addressable. It just isn't.