Until now, Premion relied on external DSPs like MadHive.

While VideoAmp attracts new clients with campaign planning tools, iSpot is better known for cross-screen attribution and demo-based guarantees.

Which would explain why insiders claim the two had initial talks about a potential merger. Neither company confirmed these talks. But, in my opinion, it’s a potential merger that makes sense.

In the meantime, Shepard said, Roku is ironing out its measurement approach by partnering with several of the top CTV measurement vendors – iSpot, VideoAmp and Comscore – to give advertisers more choice, although she didn’t detail how Roku differentiates between these providers.

Alt measurement and currency vendors used CES as an opportunity to flaunt updates to their measurement tools, including iSpot, which unveiled upgrades focused on reach and frequency for ads specifically on connected TVs rather than including streaming measurement as an add-on to linear.

Keenly aware of this sentiment, both Comscore and iSpot tout the fact they don’t sell any media.

And, to be fair, VideoAmp has been able to gain at least some market share in the TV currency space among both programmers and agencies over the past year.

To help clarify matters, MediaWallah is sticking to a standardized definition of CTV as content on a smart TV (think Samsung, Vizio, LG or Roku TVs).

Research from iSpot.tv and GroupM, which are working with other media organizations to create standards to account for continuous play, found that between 8% and 10% of impressions are delivered when TVs are off.

And iSpot, which has technology to automatically identify when and where ads appear on TV, acquired TV measurement and attribution company 605, bringing iSpot’s US household footprint to $82.7 million.

In the meantime, it’s possible advertisers may keep a hefty chunk of their marketing budgets in traditional TV rather than streaming when it comes to sports. Streaming certainly has a stronger foothold in sports compared with 2022, but right now, linear TV still makes up about 77% of live sports viewing, according to a recent report from Inscape, Vizio’s data science subsidiary.

The JIC forged ahead with plans to certify currencies it believes are ready to be used as a basis for TV ad transactions, starting with conditional certifications for iSpot, VideoAmp and Comscore in September for transparent census-level data.

Experian and Equifax vet Kevin Dean joins Truthset as general manager of its data collective. [release]

Disney and ESPN vet David Coletti becomes iSpot’s first VP of sports research and insights. [Ad Age]

VideoAmp, iSpot and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Comscore were named most often. Nielsen also remains in the running because it’s putting the finishing touches on Nielsen ONE, its new cross-platform measurement solution that includes big data.

Madhive, which secured a $300 million investment from Goldman Sachs in June, wants closer relationships with media sellers so it can access more viewing data that will help its advertisers reach their target audience, said Luc Dumont, the company’s SVP of business development.

Sources told AdExchanger anonymously that VideoAmp, Comscore and iSpot appear to be the most promising of all the non-Nielsen currencies.

But not every measurement company vying for currency status will make the cut – which is why we’re starting to see consolidation as providers shore up their solutions. Case in point: iSpot’s acquisition of its competitor 605 in September.

Utzschneider cited a partnership from Q3 with Vizio, the renewal of an exclusive partnership with Samsung, plus Publica’s integration with the Yahoo Backstage DSP as key CTV moves.

Disney+ will also now offer reach and frequency measurement based on data from iSpot and Data Plus Math, in addition to outcomes-based measurement from Innovid, Cuebiq and Foursquare. Disney already has measurement integrations with VideoAmp and Samba TV.

More advanced targeting requires exponentially more data than demo-based targeting, including new identifiers and outcomes-based data, such as sales and conversions. Ensuring all that data is accurate – with consistency across linear and streaming – is a big challenge.

“It is unrealistic to expect the way the MRC is structured to have any credibility in saying a company’s product is going to be trustworthy,” said Scott McKinley, CEO of Truthset, a data validation and measurement company, also speaking at CIMM.

Examples of calibration panels include those of smart TV companies Vizio and Samsung, which created their own respective panels over the past year using viewer data and automatic content recognition (ACR).