Collaboration leverages award-winning Samba AI™ to create new opportunities for contextual advertising along with cross-platform measurement

ADVERTISING WEEK NEW YORK, October 9, 2024 -- Samba TV, the leading provider of TV technology for audience data and omniscreen measurement, today announced its partnership with IRIS.TV, the leading content data platform, to revolutionize contextual advertising and measurement with artificial intelligence (AI). The collaboration will leverage Samba AI™ to analyze extensive video catalogs from major digital media and connected TV (CTV) publishers indexed with the IRIS_ID. The IRIS_ID is a universal content identifier that enables publishers to securely share granular video-level data with advertisers. The combination provides privacy-forward contextual targeting solutions bolstered by next-generation measurement of reach, frequency, and business-based outcomes.

The partnership marks a significant step forward in the evolution of video advertising, combining Samba AI™ with video-level data from IRIS-enabled™ publishers. Over 55 million TV videos from thousands of sites and streaming apps across the leading smart TVs and connected devices have IRIS_IDs. With access to millions of hours of streaming content, Samba AI™ will offer advertisers unprecedented insights into video content, enabling more granular contextual targeting, including topics, genres, logos, actors, sentiment, brand safety, and more, underscored by more accurate measurement across platforms. 

With IRIS.TV, advertisers can target over 500 billion monthly ad requests through their preferred ad platforms. Video-level contextual targeting drives upper and lower-funnel performance, especially for linear TV advertisers extending reach into CTV. In a recently published case study, Carl’s Jr. drove over 6X higher awareness and 2.5X incremental lift in sales by contextually targeting CTV content with IRIS_IDs.

"Our industry has been riddled by a conflict between context and audience,” said Samba TV Co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin. “This partnership with IRIS.TV represents convergence – reconnecting context and audiences to achieve measurable gains for marketers. By applying our AI to any IRIS-enabled publisher, we're not only expanding contextual advertising attributes but also providing advertisers with more accurate and comprehensive cross-platform measurement. This collaboration embodies our commitment to delivering new and more scientific approaches to advertising without compromising on privacy principles."

IRIS.TV Co-founder and CEO Field Garthwaite added, "The integration of Samba AI™ strengthens the rich contextual intelligence on every IRIS_ID, providing advertisers with deeper insights and targeting capabilities while giving our publishing partners new ways to monetize their content.” 

Samba AI™ is a suite of generative AI and machine learning (ML) technologies available worldwide. The AI solutions provide a real-time, second-by-second understanding of every scene, including facial recognition of actors and athletes in scripted, reality, and sports programming; logo, object, and product recognition for both brands and their competitors; sentiment and behavioral analysis; and brand safety detection. Samba AI™ generates new metadata and attributes about the video, but also provides insights and analytics in a user-friendly interface.

About Samba TV

Samba TV has transformed the TV from a pane of glass on the wall to a window into the heart of audiences. We are the global leader in television technology powering real-time insights and audience targeting to enable unparalleled marketing efficiency and effectiveness. Our proprietary first-party data from tens of millions of opted-in televisions, across more than 20 TV brands sold in over one hundred countries, provides advertisers and media companies a unified view of the entire consumer journey. Our independent measurement has future-proofed advertising for the next generation, empowering advertisers to connect with their audiences on any platform, across every screen.

About IRIS.TV

IRIS.TV is the only data platform built for video and CTV. We structure, connect, and activate the world's video-level data to create better viewing experiences and advertising outcomes. Our content identifier, the IRIS_ID, enables our partners to build scalable advertising solutions for contextual and brand-suitability planning, targeting, and measurement. Learn more about the IRIS_ID and the IRIS-enabled™ ecosystem of premium publishers, data partners, and ad platforms at www.iris.tv.