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State of the Screens

Attribution Measurement Is The Television Industry’s Latest Weapon

By February 22, 2018No Comments

Attribution for TV advertising is hot right now.

Advertisers are starting to measure the impact of their TV advertising through the use of technologies such as ACR.

What is ACR? Audio Character Recognition (ACR) is a technology that identifies the content that is playing (TV show, etc.) based on what it hears. It is alternative to collecting viewership through panels (Nielsen, etc.) and/or set-top box data (ComScore, etc.).

Does this mean that my smart TV is listening? Yes, but so is your smartphone and tablet.

We remember getting a demo of ACR from Gracenote at CES back in 2014 and being blown away by the possibilities. It is exciting to see this tech start to become mainstream.

This is the 3rd time (Gracenote and iSpot.tv) that we have mentioned ACR in this edition of SOTS so it is something that you should add to your radar.

Quote from Sean Muller — CEO @ iSpot.tv.
“Brands want to be able to measure TV against business outcomes,”

“The market is moving in that direction and with ACR data becoming a standard as more people are watching via smart TVs, it will only keep moving that way.”

Michael Beach

Michael Beach is the Chief Executive Officer of Cross Screen Media, a media analytics and software company that enables marketers to plan, activate, and measure CTV and linear TV at the local level. Michael is also the founder and editor of State of the Screens, a weekly newsletter focused on video advertising that is a must-read for thought leaders in the advertising industry. He has appeared in such publications as PBS Frontline, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Axios, CNBC and Bloomberg, and on NPR’s Planet Money podcast.