Netflix will allow DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science to monitor the delivery and viewability of ads on its streaming service, though the company has yet to sign a deal with a third-party measurement provider like Nielsen or iSpot.tv, according to Ad Age.

Smart TV’s increased usage in Q2 contrasts with the fact that smart TV sales have been hampered by supply-chain issues. Smart TV maker Vizio, for example, reported hardware sales had flatted from Q1 2022 to Q2 2022.

Smart TVs surpassing connected TV devices — i.e. TVs that use a CTV device like a Roku streaming stick or Apple TV puck to access streaming services — doesn’t mean that smart TV platform owners like Samsung and Vizio have overtaken CTV platform owners like Roku and Amazon for viewership share, however. In fact, Roku’s and Amazon’s CTV platforms — which are built into some smart TVs — still combine to account for more than a third of global streaming watch time in Q2.

Disparities in methodologies and results among measurement providers had originally slowed the measurement shift in the spring. They were a factor in advertisers and agencies opting to primarily stick with Nielsen as the measurement currency for this year’s upfront deals, despite the measurement provider losing its Media Rating Council accreditation and opening the door to rivals like Comscore, iSpot.tv and VideoAmp. Coming out of the upfront marketplace, the measurement shift seems to be bogged down by these same issues as TV ad buyers and sellers have gotten more aggressive in vetting the measurement providers in light of the disparities.

Personnel moves: TV measurement firm iSpot hired research veteran Will Waldron as vp of research, charged with overseeing the MRC accreditation process and statistical standards. He most recently was a lead scientist with the U.S. Census Bureau … Search intelligence platform Captify promoted Amelia Waddington from vp of product to senior vp, where she is leading the charge on a cookieless targeting solution.

For example, GroupM has been running tests with more than a dozen of its largest clients to evaluate measurement providers — including iSpot.tv and Comscore as well as Nielsen’s upcoming revamped measurement system Nielsen One — so that in the first quarter of 2023, WPP’s ad buying arm and its clients can decide on which to use as currencies in next year’s upfront market.

The trading currency is going to be one or two. It wouldn’t be done on a campaign basis because I can’t have one campaign on iSpot, another campaign on Nielsen, another campaign on VideoAmp.

In May, local advertising accounted for 20.3% of the total TV impressions bought in the U.S. by automotive advertisers, according to iSpot.TV data. A year ago it was 23%. It’s been this way since January. Local advertising has accounted for 3 to 6% less on a monthly basis compared to the same period a year ago.

In February, ad verification firm DoubleVerify said that one in four top CTV “environments continued to play programming content — including recording ad impressions — after the television was turned off.” And this month WPP’s ad buying arm GroupM and measurement provider iSpot.tv published a study that found 17% of CTV ad impressions aired while a TV was turned off.

As Simulmedia CEO Dave Morgan explained to Digiday earlier this year for an article on the myths of CTV, the CTV viewability issue spawns from the TV not always signaling to a CTV device — such as a streaming dongle or gaming console — that the TV has been turned off. The GroupM-iSpot.tv study seemed to support that by reporting “virtually no incidence of overcounts” among native smart TV apps, i.e. apps running on a CTV platform that is built into the TV.

At this point Nielsen’s costs have become so ingrained in the economics of TV advertising that it’s like a sales tax. However, additional taxes are set to be levied with TV networks and advertisers planning to eventually support alternative measurement providers, like Comscore, iSpot.tv, Samba TV and VideoAmp, as currencies. And those taxes can add up. Still, advertisers and their agencies do pay measurement costs. And they are similarly feeling their pocketbooks pinched by the potential fee increases. “The economics are huge…. As an agency, I’m going to subscribe to Comscore, iSpot, VideoAmp and Nielsen?” said one agency executive.

And yet, audiences — particularly younger audiences that advertisers have trouble reaching on traditional TV platforms — are flocking to digital and social video, from video games to social platforms. According to recent figures out of Tubular Labs, which measures viewership across the digital spectrum, social video especially outdelivers TV consumption for the Gen Z and millennial audiences by a large margin. Based on February 2022 numbers, Tubular estimated that 25-44 year-olds in U.S. watched 5.85 billion total minutes of the top 10 U.S. media & entertainment creators on YouTube and Facebook alone…Josh Schmiesing, CMO of Tubular Labs, said he knows the tide is turning even among media agencies toward making greater use of social video since agencies and marketers are Tubular’s fastest growing client segment. And he likened that adoption rate as akin to the “moneyball” phenomenon in baseball in the 1990s, when new metrics to evaluate players that went against historical norms were introduced to the game — metrics that are de rigeur today.

Nielsen now faces competition from several companies, such as Comscore, iSpot.tv and VideoAmp, all of which are trying to measure TV for various forms of effectiveness — from attention to engagement to generating business outcomes. Their efforts to measure these elements can generate various forms of currency. Many of them are trying to make their mark as not only valid forms of measurement, but important forms of currency off of which to evaluate the advertising.