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In this episode of Roku and Friends, Miles Fisher, Senior Director of Strategic Advertising Partnerships at Roku, sits down with iSpot SVP of Media Partnerships Stu Schwartzapfel, to unpack the Roku x iSpot partnership and what it means for the future of CTV advertising measurement.
1. What does iSpot actually do? iSpot is a third-party measurement company that counts ad impressions at scale across cable and smart TVs, then breaks those impressions down by audience segment in an unbiased, representative way. For publishers like Roku, iSpot validates that their ad inventory performs. For brands and agencies, iSpot compares ad effectiveness across publishers.
2. Why does this partnership matter? Roku is the first major streaming publisher to integrate iSpot's "Outcomes at Scale" product directly into its campaign optimization engine. That means advertisers can now optimize CTV campaigns in real time based on actual business outcomes — like leads, website visits, and conversions — not just reach and frequency.
3. How does iSpot measure different CTV ad formats? iSpot deploys a customizable pixel that can measure the effectiveness of nuanced ad placements across Roku City, Roku FAST channels, and Roku on-demand environments individually. Results show that ads served in content-rich environments like Roku City perform strongly on both reach and conversion metrics.
4. What does "closing the loop" mean in CTV? It means connecting an ad impression directly to a measurable business outcome. iSpot identifies devices that exhibit conversion behaviors at scale, then feeds that attribution data back into Roku's optimization engine — so future ad delivery automatically prioritizes the viewers most likely to take action.
0:05 – Miles Fisher: You're a bit of an influencer yourself, the best hair in ad tech.
0:08 – Miles Fisher: So, let me ask you, what product do you use?
0:26 – Miles Fisher: Hi, I'm Miles Fisher live in Roku City with Stu Schwartz and Falafel.
0:31 – Stu Schwartzapfel: Good to be here.
0:31 – Stu Schwartzapfel: Thanks for having me.
0:32 – Stu Schwartzapfel: It's not, it's not my name, but it's close enough.
0:35 – Stu Schwartzapfel: Schwartzapfeld.
0:38 – Miles Fisher: That's what I said.
0:39 – Miles Fisher: Yeah, it's exactly the same as what I just said.
0:41 – Miles Fisher: We're really excited to have you here, really excited about all the great work we're doing, across our ecosystem in our partnership with iSpot around measurement.
0:48 – Miles Fisher: So at a high level, we would love to jump right into really hard hitting questions.
0:52 – Miles Fisher: What does the I and ISpot stand for?
0:55 – Stu Schwartzapfel: so it's meant to, be symbolic of someone spotting an ad with their eyes.
1:03 – Stu Schwartzapfel: So when someone comes to iSpot, they could be a brand, an agency, or a publisher like us.
1:07 – Stu Schwartzapfel: What are they really looking for from a sell side standpoint, they're looking to validate the efficacy of their inventory relative to the industry, competitors.
1:17 – Stu Schwartzapfel: From a brand standpoint, they're looking to kind of evaluate how effective the inventory is that they buy across different publishers and compare them to each other.
1:27 – Stu Schwartzapfel: So it's kind of two answers to the same coin.
1:33 – Miles Fisher: Wow, So I'm sure a lot of folks who don't work in advertising technology are gonna watch this because it's gonna just go so viral.
1:41 – Miles Fisher: Can you explain measurement to me like I'm your grandma?
1:44 – Stu Schwartzapfel: So when people watch TV either through a cable box or through a smart television, there are ads that are served, and every time you see one of those ads, it's considered to be an impression, and the industry needs third parties to accurately.
2:02 – Stu Schwartzapfel: And in an unbiased and consistent manner to track those impressions and then break them down into different types of people.
2:10 – Stu Schwartzapfel: And that's really what measurement companies do.
2:13 – Stu Schwartzapfel: They count things at scale and then extrapolate them or widen them out to the US population in a representative manner.
2:22 – Stu Schwartzapfel: Yeah, and one of the things we've started to see is some of those creators and influencers going to the big screen.
2:27 – Miles Fisher: You're a bit of an influencer yourself, the best hair in ad tech.
2:30 – Miles Fisher: So let me ask you, what product do you use?
2:35 – Stu Schwartzapfel: It's a little bit of a secret.
2:37 – Stu Schwartzapfel: This stuff is hard to find, and I don't want people to copy off me.
2:42 – Stu Schwartzapfel: It's about 30 bucks a tube.
2:47 – Miles Fisher: So can you talk to me a little bit about how you talk to advertisers and customers about the impact of kind of these emerging formats on connected TV?
2:53 – Stu Schwartzapfel: The beauty of the pixel that iSpot deploys is that it's very kind of customizable so that we can look at the effectiveness of very nuanced elements of ad delivery, video ad delivery.
3:04 – Stu Schwartzapfel: So for Roku, for example, Roku City, congrats on your recent milestone, by the way, I just saw King Kong in the bathroom.
3:10 – Stu Schwartzapfel: He, he says congrats too.
3:13 – Stu Schwartzapfel: We can actually say, well, how did a video spot perform from a given brand within the Roku City environment.
3:21 – Stu Schwartzapfel: Within a Roku fast environment, within a Roku on-demand environment, one would think that because those ads coexist in a place where people are naturally looking for entertainment and content, that it's going to resonate better.
3:36 – Stu Schwartzapfel: And in fact we do see strong results for Roku City not just from a reach frequency incrementality standpoint but also from a conversion standpoint and iSpot's doing all that measurement for Roku today.
3:47 – Stu Schwartzapfel: So Roku is innovative in the sense that they leaned in very early on optimizing campaign performance for advertisers and that word optimize is used very liberally in our industry has been for a long time, but doing it in real life is a different story al.
4:04 – Stu Schwartzapfel: Together, the other cool thing it does is it allows iSpot to close the loop.
4:09 – Miles Fisher: When you say close the loop, what do you mean for that?
4:11 – Stu Schwartzapfel: Because I think a lot of folks in the industry talk about performance, and it, it has, to your point, it's gotten very in vogue to say performance and outcomes TVs, but you guys are, are one of the best at helping people understand that.
4:21 – Stu Schwartzapfel: You have elements like on demand, you have elements like fast.
4:24 – Stu Schwartzapfel: It's just different than linear.
4:26 – Stu Schwartzapfel: So the way we optimize in those environments is by literally identifying devices.
4:32 – Stu Schwartzapfel: That exhibit certain behaviors at scale.
4:35 – Stu Schwartzapfel: So ISpot is unique in that sense because we have such an expansive relationship with brands that we can at scale close that loop for publishers like you.
4:45 – Miles Fisher: Beautiful stuff.
4:46 – Miles Fisher: Yes, well, it's been great having you, Stu.
4:48 – Miles Fisher: Again, thank you for coming into Refu City today.
4:51 – Miles Fisher: Is it safe to say it's no longer ISpot, but it's WeSpot now?
4:54 – Stu Schwartzapfel: No, no, no.
