Samba TV Extends Samba AI To Holistically Measure ROI From Paid Media, Product Placement, Sports Sponsorship

Samba TV, a provider of TV technology for audience data and omniscreen measurement, today unveiled a new capability from its artificial intelligence portfolio “to enable brands to accurately and quickly measure the impact of exposure across linear and streaming sports, scripted and reality programs, video games, and more.”

Powered by Samba AI, a suite of generative AI and machine learning technologies available worldwide, Lenovo is among the first brands to leverage this solution to understand its return on sponsorship investments.

Samba TV says Samba AI “will automatically and instantly recognize when a company’s logo appears on screen — for sports programs, that could be on the track, field, jersey, or car — or when a brand is mentioned during a program, offering comprehensive viewership analysis that spans both traditional media and streaming TV. The product also analyzes the surrounding sentiment of brands, providing companies with a detailed understanding of their portrayal throughout the programming. The AI solution provides rapid analysis delivered to brands in-flight. It’s also interoperable within Samba TV’s outcome-based measurement suite, enabling brands to quickly activate targeting shifts based on the analysis.”

“Samba TV has been investing in R&D for generative AI and machine language (ML)-based analysis of video for more than a decade,” said Ashwin Navin, Samba TV co-founder and CEO. “We’re now taking our years of AI innovation a step further by working with some of the world’s most recognizable brands like Lenovo to transform the way media investments are evaluated. We are using our powerful first-party data to train best-in-class AI models to inform the most important decisions made by advertisers.”

As an early adoptee of this new AI solution, Lenovo has already been able to collect insights on its Title Race at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin. Samba TV said that on Oct. 22, 2023, there were 4,471 instances of the Lenovo brand throughout the race. “This frequency translated to strong exposure of the brand for the average viewers and was, in fact, higher than any other brand being advertised at the race. Lenovo sponsorship proved particularly successful as it generated 34% more exposure frequency than a comparable race and its title sponsor.”

Rick Corteville, Lenovo global media center of excellence executive director, said: “Measuring data and tracking analytics have always been critical in modern marketing to better gauge and understand the value of comprehensive brand appearances, including sponsorships and ad spend. Working with Samba TV has been a step forward in taking our data and better retargeting key audiences to build frequency and drive awareness of Lenovo’s brand and tech innovations. Thanks to Samba TV’s insights, we have been able to more accurately measure the value of our F1 partnership across North America. We are looking forward to further testing this solution and linking it to our brand lift and demand generation KPIs.”

Samba TV said Samba AI “goes beyond traditional monitoring and offers recommendations, tactics, and strategic insights into competitor’s activities and audience overlaps between events. These insights can then provide brands with massive opportunities to create incremental reach, eliminate waste, and create a competitive edge, allowing them to adapt their strategies based on the comprehensive market dynamics captured by the solution and help drive expanded monetization capabilities. Additionally, brands can leverage Samba TV’s comprehensive first-party viewership data to create new audience segments for targeted advertising. This feature helps brands to amplify their reach by connecting with the right audience, at the right time, in the right context.”

Samba TV will be hosting demonstrations of this product at CES, Jan. 9-12, for partners and clients.