Axwave, Inc. (acquired by
Samba TV
Samba TV is a television technology company that offers real-time insights and audience analytics. It was founded in 2008 by early employees of BitTorrent, including Samba TV's current CEO, Ashwin Navin. It develops software for televisions, set ...
, announced in August 2019) was an international
software development
Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...
company that developed a proprietary
fingerprinting
A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surfac ...
-based
automatic content recognition
Automatic content recognition (ACR) is a technology to identify content played on a media device or present within a media file. Devices implementing ACR can allow the device or the manufacturer to collect content consumption information automatic ...
(ACR) technology. Axwave was founded by Damián Scavo, former algorithmic trader and Loris D'Acunto, nuclear physicist. Axwave was headquartered in Menlo Park CA, and had offices in New York, Italy and Poland.
Corporate history
The company was incorporated in April 2012. Its first headquarters was located in Palo Alto, California. Axwave focused on developing a cutting edge fingerprinting-based ACR technology for panel-based research using a mobile
people meter. Meters using Axwave ACR were matched to Axwave's media monitoring servers located in North America and Europe. Axwave claimed to improve on the accuracy and speed of the main competitors in the ACR field.
Gsound
Axwave, Inc. (acquired by Samba TV, announced in August 2019) was an international software development company that developed a proprietary fingerprinting-based automatic content recognition (ACR) technology. Axwave was founded by Damián Scavo ...
, a consumer app, was made available to the public in the
App Store
An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the co ...
and
Google Play Store
Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating syst ...
as a proof of concept to validate the technology. Gsound reached 1,000,000 downloads while available in the stores.
Axwave's technology is currently used by companies in the media research industry through paid panelists to track key behaviors and viewing habits. Axwave's panelist device technologies are claimed to be about 100 times cheaper and more efficient than the technology previously used in households. Additionally, it allows for recognition of data that has not been watermarked.
Axwave ACR technology in the client device encrypts, compresses and sends small bytes of data to servers, which then matches against a worldwide media catalog. The algorithms used are unique in the field in that they can measure radio, podcasts, TV shows and OTT viewership, and are currently handling billions of queries per month. For example, data collected by Axwave shows that indeed OTT is the 29% of the current market share to date (2015).
A key aspect of the company's success is the content catalogue: it currently covers more than 75,000 TV ads, live TV on the top 140 US channels, up to 35 days of time-shifted TV and the largest OTT content selection in the market (100,000 assets), including all Netflix and Hulu originals, making it the largest catalogue in the industry. Axwave also has TV channels available in 15+ countries and Radio stations worldwide.
Axwave has also developed a TV ads occurrence monitoring solution that covers all the commercials broadcast in the top 100 US TV channels.
The company currently has 3 published patents and 8 provisional patents.
In April 2018, Axwave announced a collaboration with FanDuel and the NBA in the development of NBA InPlay, a real-time mobile fantasy game that uses cutting-edge technology to synchronize with the live broadcasts of any NBA games on cable or satellite.
It was announced in August 2019 that Axwave was acquired b
Samba TV
Awards
* Winner, San Francisco Music Tech in 2014
* Winner, Siemer Wavemaker Award in 2014
* Top 5 Most Innovative Companies SWSX 2014
References
{{Reflist
Companies based in Menlo Park, California
Companies based in Silicon Valley
Audience measurement
Software companies of the United States