iSpot.TV said it will provide measurement to support LinkedIn CTV, a new offering designed to target business-to-business customers on connected television.

As part of the LinkedIn Market Parner program, iSpot will be able to help advertisers measure B2B advanced audience segments and households not reached via linear TV.

“Using iSpot’s Unified Measurement, LinkedIn customers are now able to measure the reach of their CTV campaigns to the audiences that matter most,” said Stuart Schwartzapfel, executive VP, media partnerships at iSpot.

Also Read: iSpot.tv Unveils New Streaming Metrics for CTV

LinkedIn uses CTV inventory from a variety of platforms to help customers reach and engage B2B decision makers among its community of more than 1 billion professionals. 

Marketers can harness LinkedIn’s first-party data to help reach their target audience and iSpot’s measurement will give them the ability to understand ad performance in achieving business objectives.

"As the advertising industry faces increased pressure to drive results, building solutions that measure the effectiveness in reaching B2B audiences is critical," said Logan Kingman, director of business development for LinkedIn. "Through our collaboration with iSpot, we’re helping our customers better measure the accuracy and reach of their CTV campaigns against target audiences."

LinkedIn, the business-networking site, said it is getting into the connected TV ad business, working with NBCUniversal on one of its new offerings.

LinkedIn has been running in-stream video ads on its site and said the expansion into CTV will help business advertisers get their message in front of the 1 billion LinkedIn members, many of whom are business-to-business decision-makers.

Advertisers can access LinkedIn CTV through the LinkedIn Campaign Manager. The ads stream across publishers including Roku and Samsung Ads, with DoubleVerify measuring brand safety.

“We are thrilled to unveil our new Connected TV offering, uniquely designed to help B2B marketers effectively reach their target audience in the comfort of their households,’ said Sanjay Dubey, VP of engineering, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.

“This tool is powered by data from our LinkedIn Economic Graph and AI algorithms to empower our customers to connect with the right professional audience through streaming television content," Dubey said. " From our initial tests, customers have reported seeing significant improvement in brand lift, as well as lower funnel outcomes for audiences exposed to CTV campaigns.” 

Another ad product, LinkedIn Premiere, is designed to reach decision-makers watching ads in NBCU’s premium content.

“In today’s television landscape, reaching strategic audiences in a premium environment is key to developing media plans that perform,” Dominick Vangeli, senior VP & general manager of advanced advertising at NBCU, said. “By partnering with LinkedIn, NBCUniversal can give our marketing partners unique access to business decision-makers who are already watching our brand-safe, diverse and culture-defining content. This collaborative solution continues our momentum of building an audience-first media ecosystem to deliver a curated and relevant experience for viewers, as well as an optimal and effective strategy for advertisers.”

LinkedIn said it is working with measurement and research companies including iSpot.tv to estimate advanced audiences and Kantar for brand-lift studies.

“Using iSpot, you’re able to measure your effectiveness in reaching B2B audiences across platforms, like linear and CTV, for the first time,“ LinkedIn said. “By leveraging Kantar, you can get deep, actionable insights about how your campaign leads to a lift in brand awareness, affinity, or resonance among your target B2B audience.”

With a 34% increase in business people viewing events on the site, LinkedIn added, it is testing Live Event ads.

“This new, global format helps you promote your company’s live event before, during and after it takes place, dynamically adjusting based on when it occurs,” LinkedIn said.

LinkedIn said its Campaign Manager enables users to choose an objective, determine a target audience, set a budget and schedule, launch a campaign and measure its impact in terms of revenue attribution, conversions and brand lift.

Less and less a “neutral” operator of the biggest OTT device platform, Roku appears to be staffing up to produce original shows. 

Among several LinkedIn job postings providing evidence: One seeks a “lead production attorney,” who will work on the company’s “expanding slate of original content.” 

The hire will "serve as lead production attorney for Roku’s original episodic and feature length productions,” Roku said, and draft agreements “to hire writers, actors, directors and individual producers.”

The individual would be working with talent guilds and unions, crafting “production services agreements, below-the-line agreements including for department heads, location agreements, clearances, prop rental agreements, likeness releases and credit memos.”

Protocol first spotted this posting, but we found others that looked geared toward original content making, too, such as one seeking a “talent relations and marketing manager” who will be “the point person responsible for cultivating and maintaining relationships with talent, publicists, managers, agents and casting directors in the entertainment industry…”

Roku has aggressively built up its ad-supported Roku Channel over the last year. In one of its more recent deals, it paid an undisclosed sum to purchase rights to the originals shows produced by failed mobile-first startup Quibi. (Side note: Roku also acquired all the data on Quibi’s customers, according to Zatz Not Funny.)

Roku wouldn't be the only provider of a large OTT device platform building up original programming around AVOD. Amazon has been steadily adding originals to its ad-supported IMDb TV service.  And Apple has added subscription platform Apple TV Plus to its Apple TV platform.