Samba TV and IRIS.TV forge partnership to enhance contextual advertising

Samba TV and IRIS.TV have announced a strategic partnership to advance the capabilities of contextual advertising across connected TV (CTV) and digital media platforms. The collaboration, unveiled during New York Advertising Week, involves leveraging Samba TV’s advanced artificial intelligence technologies in conjunction with IRIS.TV’s contextual ad-targeting toolset. This initiative is designed to enhance advertisers’ ability to target content with increased granularity, analysing content characteristics such as genres, logos, and actors.

Samba TV, known for tracking television usage across 111 million U.S. households through opt-in data from smart TVs, employs its Samba AI suite to provide exhaustive scene-level understanding. This technology includes facial recognition of actors and athletes in various programming styles, including scripted shows, reality TV, and sports broadcasts. Furthermore, the AI solution is capable of recognising brand logos, objects, and products, offering advertisers insight into both their goods and those of competitors. It also conducts sentiment and behavioural analysis and performs brand-safety detection, contributing to more informed advertising strategies.

The new partnership with IRIS.TV aims to significantly strengthen the contextual insights offered by the latter’s platform, leveraging IRIS_ID, a universal content identifier. This identifier is used to index video content for advertisers, enabling the targeting of precise attributes and enhancing cross-platform measurement. Currently, IRIS_ID is integrated into more than 55 million video titles available across smart TVs and connected devices worldwide, supporting over 500 billion monthly ad requests.

According to the joint statement by the companies, the collaboration not only expands the range of contextual advertising attributes available but also promises improved measurement of reach and frequency in advertising campaigns. In a practical case, IRIS_ID has already demonstrated its potential; a study involving Carl’s Jr., a restaurant chain, reported a sixfold increase in brand awareness and a noteworthy 2.5-times rise in incremental sales owing to contextually targeted advertising through CTV.

Ashwin Navin, co-founder and CEO of Samba TV, remarked on the partnership as an opportunity to resolve the longstanding industry tension between context and audience-based advertising. Navin noted that by integrating Samba AI with IRIS-enabled publishers, marketers can achieve measurable improvements in campaign outcomes. Field Garthwaite, co-founder and CEO of IRIS.TV, echoed similar sentiments, highlighting that the integration with Samba AI enriches the contextual intelligence of each IRIS_ID, offering deeper insights and enhanced targeting capabilities, thereby providing publishers with new monetisation avenues.

This collaborative effort is part of a series of recent strategic moves by Samba TV. Earlier this week, Samba TV positioned itself as the preferred audience targeting partner for Madhive, which offers a comprehensive CTV advertising platform tailored for local businesses. In addition, the company has expanded its influence in the advertising technology landscape through a partnership with Comcast’s FreeWheel unit. In this arrangement, Samba TV’s Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) data will aid in more precise targeting of TV audiences, an initiative timed strategically before upcoming U.S. elections.

In the international scene, the Australian outdoor company QMS has reported success in its March partnership with Samba TV, attracting significant clients like Energy Australia, alongside financial services, department stores, and food services brands. This global expansion underscores Samba TV’s commitment to enhancing data-driven advertising strategies across diverse markets.

Source: Noah Wire Services