Comcast Advertising is bringing credit and debit card purchase data into TV targeting and measurement.
The company has announced its partnering with Affinity Solutions to integrate purchase data into Outcomes+, its audience discovery, activation, and measurement platform. The goal: help advertisers find audiences based on actual purchase behavior and measure whether TV campaigns drive real-world sales.
Why This Matters:
TV advertising is becoming more performance-driven.
As retail media networks and digital ad platforms increasingly allow marketers to target and measure against actual purchases, TV companies are under pressure to offer similar capabilities.
Through the partnership, advertisers can use Affinity’s transaction data to identify audiences based on verified purchase behavior, including category buyers, competitor customers, lapsed customers, and higher-value spenders. Comcast says advertisers can then measure whether those consumers made purchases after being exposed to a campaign.
The partnership also highlights the continued convergence of TV, retail media, and performance marketing. As advertisers demand greater accountability from every media channel, purchase data is becoming increasingly important for both audience creation and campaign measurement.
Experts React:
Here’s what Dawn Lee Williamson, CRO, Media Solutions, Comcast Advertising had to say about the launch in the company’s press release:
“Advertisers increasingly want to plan and buy media based on real consumer purchase behavior, not proxy metrics like clicks. As the performance engine for TV, Comcast Advertising helps brands apply those insights to identify untapped audiences, uncover incremental opportunities and connect TV exposure across traditional, streaming and addressable TV to drive real business outcomes. By bringing Affinity’s purchase data into our already rich first-party data environment, we’re making that capability even stronger.”
Our Take:
This is another example of TV becoming more like retail media.
Advertisers increasingly want to plan, buy, and measure media based on outcomes rather than demographics or engagement metrics alone. Bringing transaction data into TV helps Comcast make the case that television can offer the same type of purchase-based targeting and measurement capabilities marketers have come to expect from digital channels.
The broader trend is clear: the walls between TV, digital advertising, and retail media continue to come down. As that happens, access to purchase data is becoming a bigger competitive advantage across all three.
