• by Wayne Friedman , October 21, 2013

Simulmedia continues to add more consumer purchase-related TV viewing data to broaden its effort to sell non-prime-time cable TV commercial inventory to advertisers.

The TV advertising/marketing company has struck an agreement to add consumer purchase data from Nielsen Buyer Insights (NBI) to work with its Simulmedia Audience Network guaranteed TV ad campaigns. This follows a similar Simulmedia agreement with TiVo Research and Analytics that was made recently.

NBI represents 24 billion transactions and $2 trillion in annual sales from a variety of purchase source points -- retail, travel, digital, restaurant, entertainment, financial services, telecom, discount store and gas station categories -- all through credit card data.

Simulmedia’s deal with TiVo Research and Analytics brings purchase data from 37 million shopper cards used at 20 grocery retail chains, 115 million auto registrations, and prescription data from more than 1.6 billion prescription orders.

Simulmedia derives its TV viewing data from about 22 million homes’ set-top boxes -- 50 million people -- from satellite and cable operators. About a year ago, it begn selling commercial inventory. It now has access to TV commercial inventory from some 57 cable TV networks, one small broadcast network, and satellite and cable operators.
 
How much inventory? 

“We can outreach any two or three networks of any kind of a daily or weekly basis. ”It has access to TV ad inventory reaching 115 million homes. Much of Simulmedia’s TV inventory is in non-prime time dayparts -- daytime, late night, fringe or overnight time periods, he says. “If you limit yourself to prime, you are going to miss 25% of your audience.”

In now being able to offer guarantees on actual purchase behavior, Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, says the company’s efforts close the media loop from “purchasers targeted to purchasers’ advertising viewing. Having these databases is not new,” he says. “But they have always been used for research purposes. No one has ever activated them.”

Advertisers can look at purchase behavior using a number of factors and time frames. For example, it can view purchase data up to six months before a campaign is to start or more recently. Also, it can target whether a consumer has bought from a competitor over a specific time period. In some ways, Morgan says, this is like what “retargeting is to on online world.”

Using purchasing data with TV viewing data is different from traditional networks, which still only guarantee on age/
gender/demo impressions.  

Morgan says to avoid conflict with TV networks or other parties selling activities: “We sell it on an audience basis only. We never sell a program, network or operators.” Only after the campaign has run will Simulmedia disclose specifics. Also seemingly avoiding conflict: “We price higher than normal national cable rates.&rdquo ;