This week, Disney announced during its annual Tech Showcase that Samba TV and Disney would be expanding our multi-year relationship to bring Samba’s True Reach and Frequency (TRF) measurement to agencies and holding companies accessing Disney inventory. With major shifts in viewership occurring in the television landscape, this capability empowers advertisers across all categories to transact against true reach and impact across all Disney platforms, while enabling real-time omni-screen optimization. 

During the Tech Showcase, Hyundai lauded the expansion of this multi-year relationship between Samba TV and Disney. The True Reach & Frequency capability gave the automaker a look into the incremental and de-duplicated reach across the entire Disney ecosystem. “Given how much the television landscape has shifted, as part of our marketing efforts, we want to make sure we’re reaching cord cutters in our buys. This new tool does a terrific job ensuring we’re connecting with every customer we can. It’s a solution we will continue to use to measure the true impact of our campaigns,” offered Angela Zepeda, Chief Marketing Officer, Hyundai Motor America.

Samba TV CEO Ashwin Navin sat down with Rob Williams of Beet TV to discuss the news and what it means for Samba and Disney to work together on this new endeavor.

“When clients come to Disney in the upfront cycle… they know that Disney not only brings unparalleled quality, but also tremendous scale that can be accurately measured by partners like Samba.”  

 - Ashwin Navin

This partnership comes at a turning point for TV measurement as more and more viewers cut the cord and reaching the right audience becomes increasingly complex. As our most recent State of Viewership Report found, 97% of U.S. linear ad impressions in Q4 were served to the same 55% of audiences – a frustrating experience for viewers and a costly problem for advertisers. To avoid this, advertisers must rethink their measurement solutions and tap into the benefits of first-party data – like that provided by Samba TV’s True Reach and Frequency platform.

“We’re no longer measuring video on one screen in prime time, because that’s not how we watch TV anymore,” Navin shares. “We’re watching TV on all devices throughout the day, and that flexibility we offer consumers needs to be reflected in the measurement.”

Deduplicated reach has traditionally been difficult to achieve with viewership increasingly splintered across devices – from the living room TV to laptops, tablets, and smartphones. However, with Samba TV’s True Reach and Frequency, Disney advertisers will be able to better optimize their campaigns to avoid oversaturation and reach unexposed viewers across devices. 

And with around 40% of Disney's TV advertising supply now streaming, a number that’s only increasing, real-time streaming data like Samba TV provides will help secure the best outcomes for Disney advertisers, as well as agencies and holding companies accessing Disney inventory.​ 

“The important thing about this announcement is that it reflects how Disney presents video to consumers across all the screens. And it brings measurement up to the level of innovation that we’ve seen in the consumer experience,” Navin explains. “Disney has evaluated a lot of different partners, and we worked together to create a methodology that reflects what currency needs to represent now.”

Also during the Tech Showcase, Disney EVP of Client Solutions and Addressable Enablement for Disney Ad Sales, Lisa Valentino, elaborated further on the partnership:

"What Samba offers us is a scale solution at a campaign level where we can now get at unduplicated, deduplicated reach and frequency at a campaign level across those endpoints like streaming and linear - which, frankly, hasn't happened up to this point. So, we're excited about that being a new baseline for us and we're also excited about the innovation that will come."

Interested in learning more? Watch the full Beet TV interview with Ashwin Navin.