ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. and SAN FRANCISCO, June 4, 2019 — Catalina Marketing, the market leader in shopper intelligence and personalized digital media that converts shoppers into buyers, and Samba TV, the leading provider of global TV data and audience analytics, have partnered to integrate shopper behavioral data and video viewership insights at massive, unprecedented scale, encompassing tens of millions of households and billions of data points. Together, the two companies will build advanced analytics tools that fundamentally improve media buying and selling across all marketing channels, including in-store, digital, mobile over-the-top (OTT) and linear TV.
The combination of Catalina and Samba TV data will provide a comprehensive look at how all advertising, including TV advertising, is driving lift and in-store purchases for advertisers. CPG marketers and their agencies will now have a granular, real-time analysis of campaign performance in stores at the UPC-level allowing them to assess the effectiveness of cross-device campaigns across TV, digital and in-store, reach customers on the right platforms, and optimize campaigns mid-flight.
“The melding of Samba TV and Catalina’s advanced analytics capabilities and unparalleled buyer intelligence will allow advertisers to make more informed media and marketing decisions, leading to higher ROI,” said Catalina Chief Executive Officer Jerry Sokol. “Our partnership with Samba TV enables tracking of both brand awareness and ROAS, creating stronger combined capabilities. This partnership is yet another example of how Catalina is dramatically evolving to provide greater value to our customers.”
“This partnership is a massive leap forward for our industry that is still using legacy tools and methodology. Now we have massive datasets integrated to take the guess work out of media buying decisions and solve the cross-platform measurement problem once and for all,” said Ashwin Navin, founder and CEO of Samba TV. “At Samba, we have a real-time understanding of video and TV audiences at global scale. With Catalina, we marry viewership with real-time purchase data to create the most profound understanding of TV and OTT — the medium used to build brands — with the primary ways brand messages are consumed, creating a huge opportunity to drive more personalization and accountability in the media we enjoy every day.”
“Together, Catalina and Samba TV are establishing benchmarks and norms for campaign design and reporting that enable networks to track campaign performance to make in-flight optimizations, dramatically upgrading the ability to deliver outcome-based selling,” said Dr. Wes Chaar, Catalina’s Chief Data & Advanced Analytics Officer, who previously led major TV industry initiatives in audience estimation, audience targeting and audience demand modeling.
“The Catalina/Samba partnership will also fuel a new take on the Marketing Mix Model. The more granular Consumer Mix Model will use ratings that reflect an individual store’s consumer composition, trading area and ratings in near real time instead of weeks after a campaign ends, which is the current norm,” added Chaar.
Howard Shimmel, President of U.S.-based research consultancy Janus Strategy & Insights, has played a key advisory role in the evolution of the Catalina and Samba TV partnership. Shimmel is a recognized expert in data integration, audience buying and ROI/Attribution through his work as Turner’s Chief Research Officer and other leadership positions with Nielsen and Symmetrical Resources.
“Catalina and Samba’s collective expertise on buyer behaviors, motivations and lifestyles will allow marketers to be more precise in how they engage audiences to drive purchases, and to fuel the ability of media companies to sell based on outcomes,” said Shimmel. “What truly sets Catalina and Samba apart is the analytics they will apply to the data to help their customers with every stage of planning, execution and measurement.”
Catalina is the market leader in buyer intelligence and optimizing hyper-personalized in-store and digital media to measurably drive, track and measure sales lift, converting shoppers into loyal buyers for leading CPG retailers and brands. Powered by the most extensive shopper database in the world, Catalina’s mobile, online and in-store networks personalize the consumer’s path to purchase, delivering $7.9 billion in relevant consumer value each year. Catalina has no higher priority than ensuring the privacy and security of the data entrusted to the company and maintaining the consumer trust paramount to the continued success of its business partners and its own. Based in St. Petersburg, Fla., Catalina has operations in the United States, Europe, Japan and Latin America. To learn more, please visit www.catalina.com or follow us on Twitter @Catalina.
Samba TV is a San Francisco-based data and analytics company focused on a next-generation television experience that helps viewers discover and engage with relevant content, and enables brands and agencies to address and measure that engagement effectively. Samba’s insights are built on the world’s most comprehensive source of real-time viewership data across broadcast, cable TV, OTT, and digital media. Through software embedded in smart TVs, amplified by set-top boxes and mapped to connected devices, Samba TV amplifies media investment and activates cross-screen campaigns. The Samba platform informs the TV media planning process by analyzing the past viewing and second-screen behavior of a marketer’s target audience. Marketers can define their target audience by profiling website visits, consumers who are in the market for specific products, and people who have watched certain TV shows or have seen their ads. Samba TV can offer recommendations by shows, day/dayparts, and TV networks (both broadcast and cable). For more information, please visit platform.samba.tv and follow @Samba_tv.
