Vizio Bows Feature Letting Brands Limit Ad Viewership on TVs in Home

Vizio Ads, the TV maker’s “direct-to-device” advertising business, unveiled a “universal frequency control” (UFC) capability for brands to limit how often a Vizio TV set “is exposed to specific ad creative when placing an ad through its platform,” said the vendor Friday. This solves “one of the biggest problems” plaguing advertisers in the over-the-top and smart TV space seeking more precise audience measurement tools. UFC accurately measures the number of times an ad is exposed on each TV in a home across linear and cable channels, plus VOD and OTT services, it said. An “in-flight optimization” function lets brands limit the number of times a Vizio Ads media buy “reaches a device per day, week or month,” it said. UFC is powered using data from Inscape, Vizio’s automated content recognition data business. Inscape ran afoul of the FTC three years ago when the agency alleged Vizio used the service to fashion its smart TVs to spy on consumers' viewing habits without their knowledge and then sold the data to third parties (see 1702060042). Vizio paid $2.2 million to settle the allegations.