BOSTON, and LOS ANGELES, July 18, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- VideoAmp, the software and data solutions company powering the convergence of linear TV and digital advertising, today announced that it has acquired IronGrid Data Services, Inc., based in Boston, Massachusetts. Party to the acquisition, VideoAmp has launched its Data & Emerging Products Division to enable technology platforms, marketers and media companies to make decisions about how television viewership across all screens impacts business outcomes.
VideoAmp has made its success to date on building software for the convergence of linear and digital marketing. Today, the company expands its capabilities by launching a data division alongside this acquisition which offers set-top box and automated content recognition (ACR) data processing; custom audience segments for planning, targeting, and measurement; and aggregated TV viewership data.
IronGrid is a big data technology firm that provides technology platforms, marketers and media companies with access to secure, anonymized, and privacy-compliant TV Viewership data from the nation's leading multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) and connected TV providers. The acquisition brings close carrier relationships to VideoAmp including four of the nation's leading MVPDs, as well as deep expertise in TV audience data processing, audience modeling, and predictive analytics leveraging both set-top box and ACR data.
This acquisition further strengthens its planning and measurement software solutions by bolstering and differentiating the foundation of the TV viewership data sets with both set-top box and smart TV data sets that powers the software's analysis.
VideoAmp's Nick Chakalos has been named SVP and General Manager, Data & Emerging Products, reporting to Ross McCray, Co-Founder & CEO, and IronGrid's President and Co-Founder Randy Laughlin has been named Vice President, TV Data Partnerships.
"Acquiring IronGrid is a major, strategic step forward in our mission to unify linear TV and digital video advertising," said Ross McCray, Co-Founder and CEO, VideoAmp. "From targeted, index-based advertising to programmatic insertion or true cross-screen measurement and attribution, the need for clean, reliable, household-level TV viewership data has never been higher. We are pleased to meet those needs for the ecosystem."
The company also announced that it has forged an alliance with Inscape, a wholly owned subsidiary of VIZIO and leading provider of ACR technologies, cross-screen metrics and the largest single source of opt-in smart TV viewing data available in-market.
"We're thrilled to provide the industry with a uniquely robust and privacy-compliant TV and digital video audience data asset, making it possible for the first time to holistically plan, buy, optimize, and measure the impact of advertising investment across all screens," added Nick Chakalos, SVP and General Manager, Data & Emerging Products, VideoAmp. "We invite Marketers, TV Programmers, AdTech and MarTech platforms alike to leverage our TV viewership audiences and deliver actionable cross-screen insights. Together, we have the power to make advertising more relevant and useful to consumers, while ensuring it is more effective and efficient for marketers and media providers, respectively."
According to eMarketer, 66.5% of US households (82 million households) have connected TVs. By 2021, eMarketer forecasts that number will rise to 93.8 million households, driven in large part by the emergence of linear OTT services like DirecTV Now, Sling TV, Hulu with Live TV, and YouTube TV. The ANA/Forrester State of TV and Online Video Survey further reports that 50 percent of marketers are either already buying Advanced TV or experimenting with it this year. In VideoAmp's 1st Annual TV & Video Advertising Survey, conducted with Industry Index, 46% of media buyers said they will execute cross-screen campaigns that include Linear TV, VOD, OTT, and digital video inventory in 2018, and 66 percent said they will increase spending on such efforts. Seventy-four percent cited accuracy in planning and execution across both channels as the key drivers.
About VideoAmp
VideoAmp is the software and data solutions company powering the convergence of linear TV and digital advertising. Our software solutions enable marketers and content owners to holistically plan, transact, and measure deduplicated audiences across digital video, OTT, connected and linear TV advertising. Our data solutions connect linear TV viewership with addressable data assets to benefit the media, marketing and technology industries. VideoAmp is backed by Mediaocean, RTL Group and six other top venture capital firms. For more information, visit http://www.videoamp.com or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
SOURCE VideoAmp
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