iSpot.tv Snares $30M in Series C

iSpot.tv, the TV ad measurement company trusted by hundreds of disruptive brands, today announced it is bolstering the rapid adoption of its industry-leading TV advertising analytics with an additional $30 million of investment capital.

The Series C round was led by two prominent investment firms, Insight Venture Partners and Madrona Venture Group, and brings total investment in the company to $57.8 million since the company became the first to offer real-time TV advertising analytics at scale in 2012.

iSpot, which delivers actionable analytics to America's top brands in every industry category, is on a growth tear. The company has built a staff of 154 people in five years, grown its annual subscription base to more than 200 blue-chip brands, and increased revenues 100% or more year-over-year for five years running, or 14x since its last round of financing in May 2015.

The rapid market adoption comes from iSpot's unique ability to measure TV advertising with digital precision and help brands definitively attribute TV ad exposures to business outcomes. "We have entered a new era of TV advertising measurement that looks a lot more like digital, except on a medium not hampered by digital's fraud challenges," says iSpot founder and CEO Sean Muller.

iSpot has built the consistent and actionable measurement required to support a shift from GRPs (Gross Rating Points) and rough estimates of age and gender to an audience and business outcome-based approach. "T-Mobile is driving change in wireless by obsessing over customers and rewriting the rules, which includes our approach to advertising," says Nick Drake, EVP Marketing at T-Mobile. "We trust iSpot and have partnered with them to push the envelope on how our TV advertising investment is deployed and how its effectiveness is measured."

"Working in close collaboration with iSpot, we were able to develop a statistically defensible baseline," says Tim D'Auria, Head of TV Optimization at TripAdvisor, which recently credited advanced attribution as a key factor in improved business results. "In short, we compare households exposed to our TV ads with nearly identical households that were not exposed. Differences in behavior after the ad can be attributed to TV," says D'Auria.

TV networks such as those operated by NBCUniversal are able to offer validated business outcome measurement for customers through a partnership integration with iSpot.

As the TV advertising market continues to rapidly fragment into multiple services and formats, iSpot is able to verify ad impressions and time on screen across all formats, including national (live and time-shifted), local, VOD, OTT or addressable, and then benchmark ad viewing behaviors, persistently, at scale. "The most important thing isn't exactly how a TV ad gets on a screen or what program or service it runs against. What matters most is which factors are driving actions from customers," says Muller. "We're helping brands take ownership of these insights to make greater impact on their business."

"Becoming a trusted, truly independent third-party measurement company for the world's largest brands is a difficult process very few have accomplished in the last few decades," says Jeff Lieberman, Managing Director at Insight Venture Partners. "iSpot has proven that they are a clear leader in their market with their current suite of innovative measurement products. We look forward to working together with iSpot as they continue to advance the TV advertising measurement space."

iSpot will utilize investment dollars to continue product innovations and expand customer success and sales operations.

More About iSpot
iSpot is a real-time TV advertising measurement company that brings digital precision, transparency and accountability to disruptive brands. The proprietary platform provides a complete view of TV advertising activity across national, local, and OTT services, empowering brands to measure attention to ad creative and connect ad exposures to business outcomes.

iSpot offers a range of media measurement and performance metrics designed to help marketers make fast, reliable decisions and get a comprehensive view of the competitive landscape. Enhancing data from more than 9 million smart TV devices, insights from the iSpot platform are used for validating TV impressions, measuring creative wear, correlating exposure rates to digital actions and sales lift as well as predicting how best to reach actual customers. iSpot data can be easily integrated into first- or third-party DMPs and provisioned by brands or networks to agencies.

Used by top advertisers in every industry to bring measurement in-house, iSpot also works closely with most TV networks and conglomerates, including NBCUniversal, which uses conversion analytics to map ad exposures to business outcomes for its customers. The Bellevue-based company, founded in 2012, was among the 2017 fastest-growing technology companies according to Deloitte, based on a 3-year revenue growth rate of 13k+%, and its founder and CEO Sean Muller was named Pacific Northwest Entrepreneur of the Year in 2018 by Ernst & Young.