Comcast Advertising Launches Signal Authentication Service to Improve the Accuracy of Cross-Screen Measurement and Attribution of Television Advertising

New offering enhances cross-platform signal validation to help solve for current industry needs surrounding inaccurate reach and frequency analysis.

Comcast Advertising, the advertising division of Comcast Cable, announced the launch of its new Signal Authentication Service.

This new industry solution aims to provide measurement companies and platforms with a reliable identity signal that can be used across multiple privacy-forward use cases – namely impression householding for accurate reach and frequency measurement, cross-device frequency optimization, and attribution measurement.

“Our clients gain actionable insights from our brand lift surveys, tied directly to verified ad exposures. This data-driven approach empowers them to optimize their media investments and drive better results.”

Utilizing Blockgraph technology, the new service allows partners to submit ad logs, web analytics or attribution data and receive back verification that the ad exposures or events were delivered to an authenticated residential household, ensuring accurate measurement.

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In launching this new service, Comcast Advertising is offering a solution, at scale across millions of households, that delivers a level and standard of accuracy for linear and streaming TV measurement that has not yet been available in the market.

Currently, measurement and platform companies rely on IP addresses and other identifiers to link campaign events across platforms to measure and de-duplicate exposures for aggregated performance reporting. These reports, when based on probabilistic device graphs, are unreliable, as IP addresses rotate regularly.

According to a recent study, IP addresses rotate on average 1% per day, which over the life of a typical campaign, compounds over 15% and therefore can negatively impact reach and frequency reporting and cause significant errors when linking household ad exposures to household attribution events.

“The inaccuracy of today’s media reporting is greatly impacting advertisers’ ability to truly understand which parts of their media is actually providing value and the increasing amount of signal loss is further exacerbating this,” said Larry Allen, VP & GM, Data & Addressable Enablement, Comcast Advertising. “This new service will greatly improve the ability for our advertiser clients to confidently target and reach their audiences, and be able to measure campaign performance across linear and streaming.”

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With unreliable impression counting and reach underreporting happening in programmatic advertising, the ability to accurately evaluate campaign performance and understand the effectiveness and value of media has been nearly unattainable for buyers. Comcast Advertising’s new service will allow advertisers to better understand on-target reach and frequency evaluation to determine how best to allocate budget to reach valuable audiences and drive real business results.

“Recent investigations suggest that current ID graphs are of varying quality, especially those that rely on IP addresses,” said Jon Watts, Managing Director, CIMM, a non-partisan coalition focused on cultivating improvements, best practices and innovations in measurement, metrics and data usage across the media and advertising ecosystem. “Household subscriptions are some of the most accurate signals we have and can play an invaluable role in helping the industry to reliably measure and attribute campaign performance, improving our understanding of the media value.”

“Dynata, in close partnership with Comcast Advertising’s Signal Authentication service, delivers a new level of precision to CTV campaigns,” said Becky Harris, Vice President of Measurement and Data Solutions, Dynata. “Our clients gain actionable insights from our brand lift surveys, tied directly to verified ad exposures. This data-driven approach empowers them to optimize their media investments and drive better results.”

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