Prior to starting DRMetrix, for the majority of my career I have been on the agency side of the business. Of the various costs associated with running an agency, the cost of airings verification service has ranked near the top. At DRMetrix, we’re excited to debut a new service that we believe will change the landscape for DRTV airings verification. AVS™ (a simple name which is short for “airings verification service”) is DRMetrix’s first commercial product offering.
If you’re not already familiar, traditional airings verification services require that you insert an “encoding” into your commercial. Companies like Kantar, Nielsen, and Civolution have built monitoring systems that report whenever a commercial airs containing one of their encodings. This solution provides agencies with a more immediate way to know when and where each commercial airs. That being said, one of the downsides of this approach is that there can be mistakes made with the encodings themselves and these services also tend to be expensive.
Instead of encodings, AVS™ identifies commercials using pattern recognition, a technology that has been around for some time. Shazam, and other popular mobile apps that use pattern recognition technology, have shown us that it’s possible to identify content with amazing speed and accuracy. AVS™ extends the idea further by utilizing both audio and video pattern recognition technologies to identify unique TV spots and infomercials. Early on, we wondered if detection of toll free numbers and web addresses, using optical character recognition, could be combined with this technology to provide a more cost effective approach to identify and report unique variations of DRTV spots and infomercials. After nearly three years of development the answer is a resounding yes! Today, AVS™ is able to identify unique spots or infomercials as well as the associated toll free number and/or URL which appears in each airing. Equally exciting is the fact that AVS™ is able to record each unique airing for online playback. So, if you’ve ever wondered if your commercial really ran, now there is a way to watch the spot as it aired. Seeing is believing and AVS™ now makes this possible.
Since AVS™ is based on passive pattern and optical character recognition, the service is also able to provide airings detail for any spot or infomercial. In the field of competitive media research, there is now a way to see on a real time basis when and where the competition is running. AVS™ is also able to report historic airings for any DRTV campaign. Click here to review all of the breakthrough features of AVS™!
For more information or to arrange a demo of AVS™, you may contact DRMetrix at [email protected]