Rovi’s $1.1B TiVo Acquisition Is About Discovery And Addressability
Summary
One way Rovi made money was by monetizing interactive program guides within smart-TV user interfaces, which the company saw as a “natural synergy” with the patents TiVo holds around set-top box DVR technology. BOLT essentially allows a user to search for content across hundreds of distribution points like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, which “is sort of the hidden asset in all of this,” said AdExchanger’s source. “From a discoverability perspective, there is a race for people’s time, to understand where they are, on which device and, obviously, to give them the tools they need to find and discover content,” said Justin Thomas, a seven-year Rubicon vet and VP of partnerships at Button, a startup that creates contextual API-based connections between apps using deep-linking technology. But, as Thomas noted, even though the supply chain is cleaning itself up, “ads are suffering right now, whether because of issues of viewability or fraud.” Discoverability, on the other hand, is about capturing “intent wherever it’s being manifested,” he said, and having “your service or products show exactly in the moment someone is looking for them. “This deal is following a growing trend in the industry where proprietary data and large reach is the only way to thrive in or survive the tremendous shift in the way consumers are accessing media and entertainment,” said Andre Swanston, CEO of OTT audience measurement company Tru Optik.
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