As part of our upcoming series of Special Reports on the Emerging Smart TV Ecosystem, we sat down with Adam Bergman, Vice President of National Ad Sales at VIZIO, to discuss why having their own built-in data sets via ACR gives smart TV OEMs a real advantage over other programmers in the connected TV space.
ADAM BERGMAN: As a household name in the consumer electronic space, but only a year and a half old media brand, we continue to educate the buying marketplace on both our owned and operated inventory as well as all the use cases for our data.
ACR—automatic content recognition—is one of the most cohesive and impactful signals I think in the data marketplace today. So we are consistently educating the marketplace on different use cases for ACR, how to extend reach on a linear or streaming ad campaign, how to leverage ACR for competitive conquesting, how to draft off of somebody else’s spend.
Equally important is how we are offering advertisers the chance to integrate into our platform. You mentioned at the top smart television is having a moment and developing these really unique customer interfaces. We’ve been providing brands the chance to integrate in really unique ways on our platform, sponsoring content, producing branded entertainment at the NewFronts.
Yesterday we announced VIZIO Features, where we’ve stood up a data informed programming arm, where again using our ACR, understanding what our households watch, we’re actually using our data to program unique episodic content for our customers. And we’re doing that in conjunction with brands. So really recognizing that data informs all.
At VIZIO, whether it’s how we build the UI on our smart television, how we deliver and measure ads, and now, how we actually deliver programming, it’s at the core of everything we do. We think of our data as the lifeblood of our platform and that is an ongoing education with our customers, because frankly the advertising community always wants to know what’s next, and we believe there is no finish line in our business. We are wholly committed to consumer value and we’re going to continue working on that with our brands and agencies.