Oracle Plans Aggressive Move Into TV Advertising

Source: By Kate Kaye. , http://adage.com/article/media/oracle-plans-aggressive-move-linear-tv-advertising/308639/

Oracle is gearing up for an "aggressive" move into TV advertising. To kick off what should lead to more partnerships like it, the company's Data Cloud division has joined with linear TV data firm Simulmedia. Oracle hopes the pair-up will coax advertisers still spending big bucks in TV to look to its platform and audience-linked transactional data offerings, typically employed for digital advertising, before planning TV media buys.

"This is our first big move into the TV space," said Joe Kyriakoza, VP and GM of automotive at Oracle Data Cloud.

To put the partnership to use, an auto advertiser might work with Simulmedia to target luxury SUV buyers. The TV data firm would connect its viewer data to Oracle's data on in-market SUV buyers, which the firm gets through several purchase transaction data relationships with credit card firms, research firm IHS Automotive and others. Oracle can also layer in a brand's own CRM data and push it through Simulmedia's system. All of that helps marketers determine where on TV to best allocate their budgets.

"We look at this as an obvious a way to improve efficiency in TV buys," said Mr. Kyriakoza.

Simulmedia combines TV viewing behavior with transactional credit card data to target TV audiences on a household level and directly measure whether those ads led to actual purchases. The company has household level data on around 20 million people from cable companies and set-top box companies such as Tivo. Its platform does not access personally identifiable information.

Last month, Simulmedia linked up with an Oracle rival, Acxiom-owned LiveRamp, allowing advertisers to tie their TV advertising to online measurement more seamlessly.

While that LiveRamp relationship emphasizes the use of first-party data, suggested Mr. Kyriakoza, "The real value that we're [Oracle] bringing is this three trillion dollars in purchase data." Oracle says its transactional purchase data reflects $3 trillion in actual spending.

In September, Oracle joined with Visa to spin the credit card firm's transactional data into targetable audiences and campaign measurement tools for advertisers. Through that partnership, aggregated Visa transactional data associated with participating merchants and stripped of personally identifiable data is matched with Oracle IDs to build audiences for targeting mobile and digital ads, or to help brands measure whether ad exposure led to a sales transaction.