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TVision, a burgeoning television metrics company, is all about the eyeballs. Literally.
Through a console placed under the television, TVision tracks who’s watching the tube, who’s in the room, and whether they’re actually paying attention, by tracking eyeball movement, second by second...not creepy at all.
Like Nielsen, the industry’s benchmark for audience measurement, TVision scales those metrics across the country. TVision is in about 5,000 homes, and as with Nielsen, all participating families are compensated.
Quality > Quantity
“We are really trying to avoid the race to the bottom...If you just focus on CPMs, you’re going into the supermarket and buying the cheapest possible food,” Yan Liu, TVision’s CEO and cofounder, told Marketing Brew. “It’s much easier to pitch this concept to OTT platforms; they’re accustomed to a viewability guarantee.”
Case in point: This month, AB inBev worked TVision into an agreement with A+E Network, with viewership guarantees. When the data showed when and where Budweiser’s audience would be actively watching, the brand redirected spend and netted 7.6% more viewable impressions than in the previous quarter.
- Another network will be including TVision in negotiations this month, and two more networks are signed on for Q2, though Liu declined to say which networks.
- TVision also counts PepsiCo, Hulu, Roku, and Fox as clients.
Eyes wide shut
Marketing Brew spoke with a media buyer at a large agency, on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t allowed to speak to the media, who said their office is split on whether TVision is the real deal or just a chunk of pyrite buried in the sand.
- “I’m struggling to see the full value, whether the engagement is attributed to the creative, the programming,” they said. “I’m not sure you can separate the noise.”
The buyer said TVision might make sense to gauge whether people are getting tired of a campaign, but an annual subscription (which is what TVision hopes to sell) might not.
Zoom out: Time will tell if TVision’s concept will be adopted across the industry, but Roku’s acquisition of Nielsen’s advanced ad biz shows a growing hunger for smarter, faster, more measurable buys across linear and streaming. So maybe it's only a matter of time before all our screens watch us back.
Correction: An earier version of this story claimed Nielsen is in 121 million homes, which is not accurate. We're sorry for the error.