Advocado, a cross-screen advertising network based in St. Louis cross has acquired Kantar’s BVS solution, the ad verification business of the world’s leading data-driven analytics and brand consulting company. The announcement comes on the heels of Advocado’s recent acquisition of a portfolio of 47 patents, including the advanced watermarking technology from VEIL, which Kantar licenses to power the BVS ad verification business.

With this deal, Advocado can now verify the quality of broadcast ad detection data directly to the source in real-time for use in cross-media attribution, instant campaign coordination, and other use cases. The consolidation also allows Advocado to expand its broadcast TV and radio monitoring network footprint, as well as integrate CTV/OTT and audio ad verification, enabling advertisers to get unified video and audio ad verification and integrated universal attribution from a trusted source without giving their valuable customer journey data away to big tech.

With this acquisition, Advocado has a completely integrated ad verification, attribution and campaign coordination platform, allowing advertisers, media organizations and publishers to more efficiently track and measure and amplify the impact of their ads.

“We have been innovating in the ad tech space since 2017 and this consolidation gives us the scale and ability to challenge big tech, which has been unrightfully claiming ownership over advertiser and consumer data,” said Brian Handrigan, co-founder and CEO of Advocado.

“By combining our next-gen attribution algorithm with the BVS ad detection data, first-party web tracking tag and other sources, our customers will benefit from an accurate, independent assessment of performance across broadcast TV, radio and digital platforms like CTV & streaming audio.”

“Our existing customers will benefit from network, media and platform expansion as well as ongoing cross organization innovation,” commented Pete Rumpel, EVP, Kantar Media, North America. “Accurate, credible and independent verification is a key concern for our clients. Advocado’s expanded offering delivers that.”

As part of the deal, Advocado and Kantar will work together to explore new offerings based on the data and analytical capabilities both bring to the table. To help support this growth, Advocado will be integrating Kantar’s BVS employees onto its team.

“I have never been more excited about the future of BVS and the synergistic opportunities with Advocado,” said Rich Radzik, vice president of BVS, who will be joining the Advocado team as part of the acquisition.

“Through this partnership, we will continue to grow the most accurate and reliable solution that our clients have depended on for the last 33 years. With Advocado’s digital and technical expertise we will be able to launch new innovations that will further drive growth for our client partners.”

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.