Television ad analytics company iSpot.tv announced it had raised $30 million in Series C funding today, bringing its funding total past $57 million. The round was led by New York firm Insight Venture Partners and Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group.
iSpot offers TV advertisers the kind of engagement analytics traditionally reserved for digital platforms, tracking ad performance aggregated over last segments of the population, based on how users interact with them through smart TVs. iSpot CTO Anthony Skinner said the company’s technology is disrupting a hundred year-old industry.
“We know if you fast-forwarded a commercial, we know if you rewound the commercial, we know if you switched channels as soon as the ad came on,” he said in an interview with Built In Seattle.
Once upon a time, the best analytics that television advertisers could access were Nielsen ratings — where a small pool of volunteers self-reported their TV viewing habits, which were extrapolated to form conclusions about the nation as a whole.
The largest ad buyers have teams of people looking at how these things perform, so your analytics have to be able to stand up.”
Skinner said iSpot has been collecting data from opted-in Smart TV’s across the country since the company was founded in 2012. If a client signs on today, iSpot can retrieve ad performance data from this “ad catalog” stretching back six years. The company collects the data using automated processes, and the software can even distinguish between subtle variations of the same ad.
“So not only do we know what a client company has been doing, we also know what their competitors are doing, and we know how they are ranking against one another in terms of engagement,” Skinner said. “We also know how an overall brand and the industry as a whole is performing.”
Skinner said iSpot will use the funding to invest in its analytics and data science teams — and the insights they are able to glean from the data. With competitors like Nielsen, which has been in the industry for almost 100 years, disruptors like iSpot are bringing their A game.
“The largest ad buyers have teams of people looking at how these things perform, so your analytics have to be able to stand up,” Skinner said. “We have a whole data science team devoted to thinking about the metrics we produce.”
The Bellevue-based company currently employs 154 people across the country, and will be expanding their team in the wake of this latest cash infusion. Asked if iSpot looks for any particular traits in job candidates, Skinner emphasized performance.
“A lot of people talk about culture fit,” Skinner said, “and you will probably never find those words on our website. If you’re going to add to our company, if you’re going to help us extend our lead and help us dominate this niche, then we want you here. It’s not a matter of if you fit. If you’re good, you will fit.”
