Top Smart TV ACR Data Providers in 2026

Searches for ACR data providers usually want a named list, so this guide starts with one: eleven providers of smart TV viewership data, each described from its own public pages or its partners' announcements, with a link to each sourced fact. GSDSI sells a product in this category, so read this as a vendor's guide: neither the list nor its order is a ranking. The list mixes companies that do very different jobs. Some TV makers use automatic content recognition (ACR) only inside their own advertising business. Some license the viewing data to other companies. Others license ACR in and sell measurement built on top of it. Knowing which of those three you need will narrow the list faster than comparing footprint numbers, which are counted in different units and are not comparable. For the signal itself, start with CTV/ACR 101; for the buying questions, see the CTV and ACR buying guide.

Top smart TV ACR data providers in 2026, compared

Each row below uses the provider's own public pages or a partner's announcement, and every fact links to its source. Scale is shown exactly as each provider states it, with the year where the source gives one. Where a provider does not publish something, the cell says "Not stated on site" rather than guessing. GSDSI appears as one option, described only from what our own CTV / Smart TV (ACR) Feed page publishes.

Read the scale column with care. Inscape and Samba TV count TVs or TV devices, and Samsung states household reach. Nielsen, Comscore and VideoAmp count households and devices, and their figures combine set-top box data with smart TV data. iSpot.tv's figure also combines both. Some figures are recent and some are several years old. Inscape's count has moved over time. An earlier 605 partnership announcement cites about 20 million, and Inscape's 2025 page states over 25 million opted-in VIZIO TVs, so use the provider's newest dated figure and ask for the current one in writing.

Three kinds of ACR provider, and why the difference matters

Every provider in the table falls into one of three groups, and the group decides what you can actually buy.

• TV makers that use ACR mainly in their own ad platform. Samsung Ads and Roku use the viewing data from their own TVs to sell targeting and measurement on their own inventory, so you mostly buy media rather than data. Samsung told The Register in 2020 that its ACR data is not sold, rented or distributed. Roku also supplies TV data to Nielsen's measurement.
• Licensors of viewing data. Inscape (VIZIO) and LG Ad Solutions license ACR data to partners, and LG shares data through the Databricks Marketplace. Samba TV offers viewership data built on ACR in TVs from many brands, but raw-file terms are not confirmed, so ask. Inscape and LG are the clearest route when you want rows in your own warehouse.
• Measurement companies that license ACR in. Nielsen, Comscore, iSpot.tv and VideoAmp buy ACR data from TV makers, combine it with set-top box data and panels, and sell ratings, currency and outcome measurement. You buy a measurement product, not the underlying feed.

TVision sits outside all three. It runs an opt-in, person-level panel that measures who is in the room and looking at the screen, which ACR cannot see. GSDSI sits in the licensing group as a data broker: we license a U.S. ACR viewership feed and sell it alongside other datasets, such as the Euclidean Feed, which links mobile ad IDs, smart TV ACR exposures and CPG purchase events for closed-loop attribution.

How to choose an ACR data provider by job to be done

• Buying CTV media with ACR targeting on one brand of TV: Samsung Ads, Roku or LG Ad Solutions. Expect to buy media, not data.
• Licensing raw viewing data for your own measurement, attribution or data science team: Inscape, LG Ad Solutions, or a broker such as GSDSI; ask Samba TV whether raw files are offered. Ask each for field-level documentation and a sample.
• Audiences across many TV brands and countries: Samba TV, which states its software runs in smart TVs from 24 brands.
• Ratings and currency for national or local buys: Nielsen for the accredited national standard, Comscore for local markets, VideoAmp or iSpot.tv as alternative currencies.
• Outcome and attribution measurement for TV ad spend: iSpot.tv and VideoAmp, or a licensed feed joined to your own outcome data through cross-channel measurement.
• Calibrating ACR with person-level viewing: TVision.

GSDSI is one option on this list, not a default answer. Most teams take two or three finalists through the same sample test, described below, before anyone signs.

Methodology and sources

GSDSI sells a smart TV ACR feed, so we have an interest in this category; the table is a list, not a ranking. The facts in the table were compiled on October 1, 2026 from each provider's own public pages, from partner press releases on the partner's own site, and, where labelled, from trade press. Each fact links to the page it came from. Figures are shown as each provider states them, with the year where the source gives one, and are not converted or averaged. Where sources disagree, the post cites the provider's own figure and says that others differ. "Not stated on site" means we did not find the fact on the linked public pages, not that the provider lacks it. The "Best fit" column is our opinion. Providers can email corrections to info@gsdsi.com, and we will update the row with a link to the new source.

The legal context for ACR data, as of October 2026

ACR has a specific enforcement history, and it shapes what a careful buyer asks for. In February 2017, VIZIO agreed to pay $2.2 million to the FTC and the State of New Jersey to settle charges that it collected viewing histories on 11 million smart TVs without consent. The order requires VIZIO to prominently disclose its data practices and obtain affirmative express consent before collecting viewing data.

In December 2025 the Texas Attorney General sued five TV makers, Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense and TCL, over ACR data collection. Two of those cases have since produced agreements. In February 2026 Samsung agreed to stop collecting ACR data without consumers being fully informed and consenting. In May 2026 LG agreed that it will no longer use ACR to collect viewing data without informed consent. This article does not report the status of the other three cases; check the Texas Attorney General's newsroom for current filings.

For a buyer, the practical point is that consent evidence now travels with the data. Ask every provider how consent was captured, on which screens, whether it can be withdrawn, and how withdrawal reaches the files you already hold. Put the answers in the contract, alongside the permitted uses covered in our guide to data licensing agreement red flags. This section is general information, not legal advice; take specific questions to counsel.

What to ask every ACR data provider

Test design: run a sample before you sign

A shortlist built from footprint numbers tells you little. A sample test on your own airings tells you a lot, and it takes two to four weeks. The fuller version is in our guide to CTV measurement test design; the short version follows.

1. Pick one recent flight you know well and pull its as-run logs: network, date, time and creative for every airing.
2. Ask each finalist for detections of that creative over the same weeks, in the same markets.
3. Score detection rate against your logs, false detections, and the lag between airing and delivery.
4. Check identifier stability across the weeks, and the match rate when you join the feed to your household or identity graph.
5. Compare coverage by market and by input (linear, streaming apps, other HDMI sources) rather than as one national total.
6. Write the scoring weights down before the files arrive, and keep the losing results with the contract.

Use the same seed and the same rules for every finalist, as described in seed-match testing and the vendor bake-off checklist. Once the feed passes, the measurement work starts; programmatic CTV and ACR covers how the data enters a DSP.

Where GSDSI fits

GSDSI licenses ACR viewership from ~13-14M unique CTV IDs per month across the U.S. smart-TV footprint, delivered as daily feeds of ~15K+ gzipped files. The product page describes passive, opt-in collection on participating smart TVs, with fields for ctv_id, event_timestamp, content_id, channel and exposure_type, in CSV, JSON, Parquet or API. It is a feed for your own warehouse, not a ratings product or an ad platform. We do not claim to be the right choice for every buyer. If a raw U.S. feed is what you need, request a sample through the CTV / Smart TV (ACR) Feed page and run it through the same test as every other finalist.