What if you could unlock the power of real-time data to measure and optimize local ad campaign reach more effectively across streaming video and broadcast TV? Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) data makes that possible, enabling precise measurement that’s integrated across video platforms, and provides valuable insights into viewership behaviors and reach of consumers watching content on the big screen. In this piece, Locality explores the power of ACR data, its benefits for local advertisers, and how it powers Locality’s cross-platform data-driven video solution, Reach+, to supercharge your local video campaigns.
What is ACR Technology?
Automatic Content Recognition is a technology embedded in smart TVs that detects content in real-time by identifying unique audio and visual “fingerprints.” Essentially, ACR scans broadcast, linear cable / satellite, streaming, and digital omnichannel video on TV to match the audience’s viewable media on screen with a pre-existing content reference library. This results in powerful data that can identify what content is being consumed on screen, where, when, and by whom.
ACR technology is a game-changer for advertisers looking to understand consumer behavior across video platforms. For example, measurement services like Inscape and Comscore, gather ACR-powered TV viewing data from millions of smart TVs across the U.S., while iSpot aggregates this information in an industry accredited patchwork form. Each provide actionable viewership insights that brands can use to refine their ad campaign strategies for effective reach and efficiency.
Through ACR, local advertisers can pinpoint which video ads and shows consumers are viewing across streaming, digital, broadcast, and linear video on their smart TVs, enabling them to deliver addressable, localized campaigns tailored to the cross-platform viewing behaviors of consumers in any DMA (Designated Market Area), Zip code, or neighborhood. By identifying the exact content being viewed, ACR data empowers marketers to plan their campaigns for local context, activate and flight by local viewership behaviors, measure ad delivery by video platform, and optimize their cross-platform video campaigns for incremental reach—controlling the right frequency and allocating ad impressions by platform. The result? The most effective and precise measurement of local audience reach, empowering ad campaigns viewed on television to achieve accelerated, measurable outcomes for brands like never before.
How ACR Data Transforms Local Advertising
For local advertisers, the ability to understand consumers’ video viewing behaviors in real time is crucial. The challenges of fragmented TV consumption—viewers shifting between streaming services, digital omnichannel, and traditional TV—has long been a pain point for national, regional, and local brands, both large and small. ACR data unifies the measurement of cross-platform video on the TV screen. This data-driven intelligence provides advertisers a complete view of how their campaigns are performing across these platforms, enabling marketers to gather their campaign’s incremental audience reach across different video platforms, better understand how their ad messages are resonating with consumers in the local markets they serve by platform, and optimize their campaigns based on real-time viewership patterns.
Steve Silvestri, Head of Data Strategy & Innovation at Locality, emphasizes, “No single data source provides all the answers, but ACR data has unlocked an essential view of consumption allowing for unified measurement across all viewing platforms and modalities. Whether content is consumed on traditional cable, broadcast, FAST channels or streaming services, ACR data enables a comprehensive view of how and what audiences are consuming. This has opened the door to new and innovate advertising solutions and is aiding in the rapid transformation of how media sellers and marketers alike, can leverage data for precision and effectiveness.”
With measurement from companies like Comscore providing data on local consumer cross-platform viewing behavior, advertisers can refine their campaigns by analyzing demographics, location, context, and viewing habits. These insights help local advertisers home in on highly specific audiences. The ability to identify viewership and engagement at such a granular local level allows brands to fine-tune their messaging for optimal results. Furthermore, ACR allows advertisers to measure and control frequency and ensure their messages aren’t over-saturating their audiences.
An Inscape case study demonstrated the power of ACR data in driving a Locality Reach+ campaign’s success. Reach+ is a data-driven ad solution that simplifies planning, activation, measurement, and optimization of local video impressions across premium streaming and broadcast TV. By leveraging ACR data to measure a DMA targeted campaign at scale, insights revealed that Locality’s Reach+ campaign achieved 27% incremental reach above the advertiser’s local linear TV, national linear TV, and other streaming ads outside of the campaign’s purview—a clear eyed understanding of audience duplication by platform, measuring the campaign’s ability to reach new viewers in the market not previously exposed to the ad. This highlights how ACR data is essential for measuring the total reach of local cross-platform campaigns and providing valuable, granular viewership insights into how video campaigns on TV screens can attribute brand awareness and audience attention in specific markets—ultimately accelerating outcomes for advertisers.
Powering Local Cross-Platform Campaigns
ACR data unlocks a new dimension of contextual targeting and viewership measurement on the big screen. As Digiday explains, consumers increasingly prioritize content over platform loyalty. This means advertisers must be agile, adapting their strategies to meet consumers wherever they watch TV. ACR data provides the ability to measure audiences based on video platform viewing preferences, media consumption habits, and geographic location, all in real time.
For example, ACR data can reveal that a viewer is streaming a live sports event on their CTV (Connected TV) and subsequently retarget them with a relevant ad on broadcast TV, ensuring your brand reaches and meaningfully connects with the viewer wherever they’re most likely to be engaged. This cross-platform approach, bolstered by ACR insights, ensures that advertisers can consistently maintain a presence in front of their audiences—controlling for ad frequency—even as habits and time spent viewing shifts.
ACR data enables advanced measurement capabilities of any geographically targeted cross-platform video campaign on smart TVs. Through partnerships with measurement firms like Inscape and Comscore, advertisers can evaluate their national and local campaigns, holistically, in terms of incremental and duplicated reach. This means brands can measure ad impression exposure on TV screens across streaming services, broadcast TV, digital video, and linear cable / satellite TV platforms, optimizing their campaigns to ensure the best possible ad delivery for their market-by-market needs.
Challenges with ACR Data
While the benefits of ACR data are clear, there are challenges that come with utilizing it for local video campaigns. Fragmentation is a key issue. Different TV device manufacturers and video content services often have their own walled data ecosystems, making it difficult to get a full view of consumer usage across all platforms and devices. For instance, some of these companies offer their own siloed ACR solutions but are not always integrated with third-party measurement firms.
Moreover, privacy concerns around consumer data may limit the depth of insights advertisers can gather. With stricter regulations governing consumer data, there is an ongoing need to ensure data collection and usage practices are privacy compliant while still providing valuable insights to local marketers.
Lastly, the availability of data is another challenge. As Comscore notes, ACR data is more effective when it is rich and complete. However, some content, particularly niche or local content, might not be well-represented in ACR reference libraries, making it harder to track engagement with certain viewers or content types.
A Solution: Locality Reach+
To conquer these challenges, Locality Reach+, powered by ACR intelligence, provides an integrated solution that overcomes many of the obstacles local advertisers face. Reach+ simplifies the cyclical nature of local video ad buying by seamlessly combining ACR data with our direct ad inventory access to 150+ streaming services, 400+ broadcast TV stations, and digital omnichannel video across all U.S. DMAs. This unified cross-platform, data-driven approach eliminates the fragmentation inherent in traditional local video ad buying and measurement, with insights informing present and future campaign planning and activation for advertisers.
“For Locality,” Silvestri notes, “the launch of Reach+ last Fall (2024) has opened the door to incremental value and fueled new opportunities and solutions for locally focused advertisers. This level of insight and capability was unachievable just a year ago. By leveraging ACR data, we can now provide a more comprehensive understanding of local market dynamics, enabling advertisers to fine-tune their strategies and achieve greater reach and engagement. This advancement underscores the transformative impact of ACR data in driving innovation and effectiveness in local advertising.”
Reach+ empowers local advertisers with the ability to measure incremental reach across local and national streaming, broadcast and linear video campaigns on smart TVs. This allows for intelligent optimization, including adjustments to frequency, addressable targeting, and video platform placement based on audience viewing behavior at the local level—ensuring local campaigns are continually refined for maximum scale and effective reach in the markets you serve.
Key Takeaways
As local advertisers face the increasing complexity of fragmented media consumption and cross-platform ad measurement, leveraging ACR data has become a crucial step in refining and unifying video campaign strategies. By tapping into the data source of ACR technology, advertisers can achieve more precise targeting, measure incremental reach and control frequency, generating stronger engagement with local consumers in their local context. However, to truly maximize the power of ACR data, advertisers need a solution that can unite and measure fragmented viewing behaviors inside the video ecosystem and offer actionable insights.
Locality provides advertisers—both big and small—with the largest local scale of video inventory across streaming and broadcast TV in the U.S. Locality Reach+ stands out as the solution for local video campaigns, seamlessly integrating ACR data with a powerful cross-platform ad delivery and measurement system. Our unmatched local scale combines the broad reach of broadcast TV with the precise targeting capabilities of streaming and digital video, ensuring ad messages connect, with impact, to the right audiences watching the big screen, across any local market.
For local advertisers looking to harness the full potential of ACR data and drive better campaign results, Locality Reach+ offers an efficient, data-driven, and scalable solution designed to unify a fragmented video ecosystem for advertisers, while maximizing cross-platform campaign impact, and drive outcomes where it counts the most—at the local level.
References:
Locality Reach+: https://locality.com/reach-plus
Comscore: https://www.comscore.com
Inscape: https://www.inscape.tv
iSpot.tv: https://www.ispot.tv/hub/data-connect/
Digiday: https://www.digiday.com
Steve Silvestri, Head of Data Strategy & Innovation, Locality
Steve Silvestri leads Locality’s data strategy and innovation, focusing on advanced data solutions and partnerships to help brands effectively connect with local audiences and boost ad engagement across multiple video platforms.
