Ace Metrix

Ace Metrix is an advertising analytics company that measures and scores the creative performance of television and digital video advertising. Its technology captures a breaking ad automatically and uses proprietary fingerprinting to determine whether the ad is new. Each ad is then shown to a unique panel of 500 respondents who complete a standardized quantitative and qualitative survey; more than 12,000 data points per ad are processed and delivered into the Ace Metrix LIVE software platform within 24 hours, accessible on desktop and mobile.

Ads are scored on factors including relevance, likeability, information, change, attention and desire, along with re-watchability, purchase intent and brand linkage, rolled up by a proprietary algorithm into an aggregate "Ace Score" on a 0-950 scale. Open-ended verbatim responses are mined with natural language processing to produce measures of emotional sentiment and humor. Nationally televised and digital video ads are scored by 500 U.S. consumers weighted to census age, gender and income, with sample balancing intended to remove source bias and sample sizes large enough for demographic, ethnographic and psychographic cross-cuts. Products have included Ace Metrix LIVE, Ace Metrix PRE, Ace Metrix TREND and Ace Metrix TARGET.

Founding story

JuYoung Lee and Steve Goldman founded Ace Metrix in June 2007, and the company launched its ad measurement service in June 2009.

Business model

Ace Metrix sells subscription access to syndicated ad-measurement data and analytics. Ace Metrix LIVE is described as a subscription data service providing analytics on digital creative across screens, with clients able to add custom open- and closed-end questions and augment the 500+ general-population sample with additional targeted respondents. At the time of its acquisition the company was characterized as a profitable enterprise SaaS business with roughly 100 large advertiser brands under contract.

Subscription/SaaS access to the Ace Metrix measurement platform and syndicated ad-performance database, with optional custom survey questions and expanded targeted samples sold alongside the core service.

Traction

The company reports a database of more than 100,000 TV and digital video ads from 4,300 brands across 118 categories, yielding over 50 million responses and 35 million verbatim comments; as of October 2018 the LIVE platform held over 80,000 scored ads, 40 million consumer interactions and 25 million verbatims. It employed 45 people and served roughly 100 large advertiser brands at the time of the 2021 acquisition.

Latest developments

In January 2021 iSpot.tv acquired Ace Metrix to combine iSpot's reach, conversion and lift measurement with Ace's creative and brand-impact assessment. iSpot said it would immediately integrate Ace's technology and operations, retain the Los Angeles headquarters, and that the combined business held annual contracts with more than 500 brands, including over 50% of the Ad Age 100 and 96% of U.S. TV networks.