Samba TV Launches Real-Time Viewership Dashboard

Samba TV Real-time TV Viewership Dashboard
Samba TV's Real-time TV Viewership Dashboard (Image credit: Samba TV)

With Nielsen under fire for undercounting viewers during the pandemic, Samba TV is launching its Real-time TV Viewership Dashboard, which lets advertisers see what channels and shows are being watched within seconds.

Samba TV is launching the dashboard in four of the largest media markets--the U.S., the U.K., Germany and Australia--just before the start of the Olympics.

“As a leading provider of real-time TV data at global scale, Samba is uniquely able to quantify just how powerful the Olympics audience will be for viewership and brand sponsorship, which remains the primary business model for the Olympics globally," said Samba TV co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin. “Now more than ever, TV data is critical for the media industry desperate to understand the rapid changes in viewership behaviors pre-, mid-, and post-pandemic. In the spirit of using data to drive transparency in media and foster innovation in the viewing experience of TV, we are pleased to offer the industry this powerful tool at no cost to facilitate discussion and innovation.”

Samba TV’s automatic content recognition technology, integrated at the chipset level across 24 Smart TV brands globally, identifies content that appears on the TV screen including TV shows, commercials, movies, and video games. With a global addressable footprint of 46 million devices, the company said its data enables advertisers, TV networks, and publishers to discover their TV audiences, amplify their marketing message across screens, and quantify the impact of their advertising.

As part of its announcement, Samba TV provides endorsements from media buyers.

“Having been at the forefront of providing our clients the most innovative and scalable data, Samba TV’s Real-time TV Viewership Dashboard is an important resource for every global brand engaged in large-scale events like the Olympics,” said IPG Media Lab managing director Chad Stoller. “This interactive tool provides comprehensive and at-scale TV analysis, imperative to our industry where there have been historic challenges making decisions with real-time data.”

"In today’s more addressable, measurable media ecosystem, marketer needs have evolved – they want to buy TV advertising the way they transact digitally – more dynamic, more flexible, more informed by data, and importantly, optimized in real-time,” said Dentsu's Amplifi U.S. president Mike Law. "Audiences around the world will be tuning into the Olympics almost universally, and tools like Samba TV’s Real-time TV Viewership Dashboard can enable understanding that fuels in-campaign buying decisions like never before.”

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.