TelevisaUnivision and VideoAmp Bring Representation to Data in New Partnership

The companies team up to power advanced advertising solutions and better reach US Hispanics

By Bill Bradley

Data has a big representation problem, and TelevisaUnivision and VideoAmp are trying to solve it.

The companies are teaming up to bring better representation to data. In the new partnership—announced today during VideoAmp’s Currency Collaboration event at Cannes Lions, TelevisaUnivision will leverage VideoAmp’s measurement and optimization data to power advanced advertising solutions and better reach U.S. Hispanics.

“We have lots of headlines around people writing upfront deals using new currency, new attribution providers with all sorts of new studies that they’re releasing, and when we dig in, we see lots of gaps in terms of how many of these datasets represent minority audiences, and U.S. Hispanics and Spanish language in particular,” Dan Aversano, svp of data, analytics and advanced advertising at TelevisaUnivision, told Adweek.

“[VideoAmp] obviously understood and acknowledged many of the challenges with measuring minority audiences and Hispanics in particular, and they rolled up their sleeves. They put time, effort and resources into ensuring that their data was best in class in terms of representation and inclusivity,” Aversano added.

At the center of the partnership is TelevisaUnivision’s Hispanic household graph.

During its in-person upfront presentation last month, TelevisaUnivision said its graph covers more than 85% of U.S. Hispanic households. VideoAmp will make that data even richer to power planning, targeting, cross-platform measurement and currency solutions, enabling advertising partners to better reach and connect with the U.S. Hispanic audience.

“We take our graph, we take the VideoAmp data and we put those pieces together, and now we’re left with an asset that enables a ton of granular insights around consumption for U.S. Hispanics across linear, digital and true cross-platform,” Aversano said.

According to Pew Research Center, the U.S. Hispanic population grew to more than 62 million in 2020, and it continues to spread out geographically across the country. Yet, Aversano noted that there is a significant gap between the number of advertisers that spend in Spanish-language programming and those that don’t recognize the value of the Hispanic audience. And it may simply come down to faulty data.

“Usually, when we dig in, we find out that it’s because they’re using a very limited set-top box only or ACR-only dataset. It’s not properly weighted, it’s not properly extrapolated, and that’s what’s really causing what we think is ultimately faulty representation in the data. So it’s a huge problem that actually has big implications,” Aversano said.

VideoAmp’s data helps address those concerns.

“We pioneered the methodology of integrating smart TV ACR data and set-top box data into a single commingled footprint. The diverse audiences are represented differently in different datasets, so the ability to bring those into a unified data set with multiple sources allows us to minimize the variations there,” Michael Parkes, president of VideoAmp, told Adweek.

Avoiding big data has big consequences

The VideoAmp president explained by avoiding the smaller, panel-based approach, the company can reach a more significant portion of Hispanic audiences.

“The argument that big data can’t represent minority audiences, I think, is definitely flawed. And our process of prioritizing quality over speed—and the rigor that we put into ensuring that we have the right corrections for bias through weighting and how we treat and process that data to deliver accurate measurement—is different from a lot of others that may have focused on speed over quality,” Parkes said.

Through the partnership, added Parkes, “we’re going to be able to really prove that this audience performs well; it delivers value for the advertisers. And ultimately, that’s going to drive more spend.”

And there could be even more opportunities for the two companies ahead.

“This is the start of a powerful, strong relationship. I think there are even bigger things that we’ll do going forward,” Aversano said.