Why Martin Sorrell is investing in CTV buying platform tvScientific

Martin Sorrell-backed venture fund S4S Ventures is investing in self-service connected TV buying platform tvScientific, which has just hired former Twitter (now X) VP of global sales and marketing Chris Riedy as its new chief revenue officer. The moves aim to help tvScientific shift connected TV toward performance marketing and a much broader range of advertisers. The platform is designed to let advertisers buy CTV on a cost-per-outcome basis, beyond the reach and frequency metrics that long have dominated the market. That includes allowing buys based on cost per acquisition, return on ad spending, sales and post-exposure campaign traffic. Also read: Creators are flocking to connected TV Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Current tvScientific customers include major brands such as Experian, MoneyGram, Crocs, Groupon and Fender. But Riedy, in an interview, said he sees potential to build CTV’s reach far more into the long tail of small and medium-size advertisers, who tend to be performance marketers. S4S Ventures is leading a $9.4 million funding round for tvScientific in the form of a convertible note, joining BDMI, Progress Ventures, NBCUniversal/Comcast, Norwest Capital Partners, Aperiam Ventures and Hearst Ventures. Sorrell, who is the founder and executive chairman of S4 Capital (which is a separate entity), said he sees tvScientific as a means by which a CTV market he describes as a “sleeping giant” can build a larger share of a global ad market he pegs at $950 billion, with $650 billion of that now going to digital platforms and $400 billion of that to the major U.S.-based digital platforms. “CTV is a way for the linear networks to start building targeted audiences,” Sorrell said, and for retailers to deploy their first-party data. “An entire cohort of brands have been on the sidelines, because they didn’t find the targeting nor the measurement sufficient,” said Sanja Partalo, co-founder and managing partner of S4S Ventures. “A ton of these brands have been born in the past 15 years, looking at CTV as their onboard to TV advertising. The demand has always been there, but the tools weren’t.” TvScientific reaches 95% of ad-supported video-on-demand customers, said CEO Jason Fairchild. His long-term vision, he said, has been to democratize access so a CTV platform concentrated on just 500 advertisers to the roughly 9 million now using paid search and “enable any business of any size to buy and measure TV in the same way they do Google or Facebook, then introduce, more importantly, a new measurement paradigm that revolves around business outcomes.” Amazon already has gone the way of steering its millions of third-party marketplace sellers into CTV through its recently launched Sponsored TV self-service platform. Walmart’s proposed acquisition of Vizio opens the door for another retail giant to take similar steps to reach out to marketplace sellers and other small and medium-size advertisers to buy CTV via self-service tools. And tvScientific is a platform that likewise can help long-tail advertisers and other performance-focused marketers that long have seen CTV beyond their reach to buy ads in streaming networks. Working with the platform, as of last year, NBCU already had built out its advertiser base to more than 40,000, but even that’s well shy of the millions of advertisers served by the big digital platforms. Focus on performance is one key to reaching a broader market, Sorrell said. “People are very focused on short-term results. There have been waves of people going from brand awareness focus to performance. I don’t think the idea of being performance-focused is going away.” Riedy said an alignment of goals and values with tvScientific was important to persuading him to make the move, as was the ability to demonstrate outcomes. “At the last place,” he said, referring to Twitter, many of the advertisers were more focused on leveraging CTV, and he understands the appeal. “You’ve got the lean-back consumer engaged,” he said. “No brand safety problems. No brand suitability problems. Can’t skip the ads. You just happen to consume them.” But with tvScientific delivering a self-service platform and the opportunity to buy based on outcomes, it opens the market to a broader range of advertisers, which also was part of the appeal. “I wanted the opportunity to make an impact,” he said. ~ ~ ~CORRECTION: A previous version of the story said S4S Ventures is a unit of S4 Capital. It’s a separate entity, though Martin Sorrell is a principal involved in both. Media measurement blog Tracking TV, social and digital updates Click here

Why Martin Sorrell is investing in CTV buying platform tvScientific

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