San Francisco, CA – August 20, 2019 — Samba TV, the leading provider of global TV data and audience analytics, today announced that it has acquired Axwave through a combination of cash and stock. Exact terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Samba TV announced in connection with its $30m Series B financing from Liberty Global, Disney and Warner Media and others that it would use a portion of its proceeds for international growth and strategic acquisitions.
Combined with Samba’s AI-driven commercial break detection from 20m households worldwide, Axwave’s workflow for automatic detection and tagging of TV spots and its use of computer vision for logos and brands in linear video builds a foundation for the most accurate, real-time global TV spot schedule.
This combination is highly disruptive to the legacy TV spot schedule process that relied on human-tagged metadata which is delayed, manually-created, and prone to error.
Axwave’s innovative technology powers accurate, real-time detection, extraction and tagging of TV spot occurrences worldwide across national, local, over the air, cable, and OTT providers. The addition of Axwave’s commercial scheduling, metadata, currency grade cross-media panel management and analysis will allow advertisers to access detailed insights on TV commercials for their brands and also competitors at global scale.
“Technology developed by the Axwave team defined the market for commercial monitoring in the US and Europe implemented by companies like the BBC, Comscore, Ipsos and the National Basketball Association (NBA). Their pioneering attitude, blue-chip customers and intellectual property made them a seamless fit into Samba,” said Ashwin Navin, co-founder and CEO of Samba TV. “With this acquisition, we’re not only adding a team of exceptional technologists, we’re also solving a major industry challenge by providing the world’s most robust and accurate TV ad schedule for global brands.”
This acquisition bolsters Samba’s market-leading understanding of global TV advertising and enhances the company’s capabilities for cross-platform measurement of reach, frequency and conversions to real-world business outcomes, including tune-in. Axwave’s TV spot detection will also be incorporated into Samba’s ground-breaking Causal TV Attribution solution, which provides precise measurement of which TV strategies are driving incremental lift in advertising effectiveness.
“As audiences become more fragmented, it’s more important than ever that advertisers understand how TV ads contribute to advertising ROI,” said Axwave’s founder Damian Ariel Scavo. “The Axwave patented solution combined with Samba’s capabilities allow advertisers to go beyond legacy ratings and precisely measure the effectiveness of their TV advertising.”
“Our team integrated with Samba almost immediately due to our shared vision and desire to solve similar problems with ground-breaking technology and the very best technical talent we can find,” said Maciej Donajski, Axwave’s VP of Engineering. “When I joined Samba, I was profoundly inspired by the quality of engineering and drive to innovate within an industry that’s become too complacent with legacy tools and providers.”
