When Kevin Krim set out to build EDO a decade ago, he had a simple but transformative vision: TV advertising should work more like search and social advertising, automatically optimizing for real business outcomes rather than traditional audience metrics like reach and frequency.
Today, we’re seeing that vision become reality. In a recent conversation with The Current Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Paterik, he shared insights on how EDO is transforming TV measurement through predictive behavioral data, creative optimization feedback loops, and Vertical AI models trained specifically for the advertising industry.
Krim's unique perspective stems from a career that spans the evolution of digital advertising. "I spent the first third of my career as an advertising product manager doing early search ads and early social ads at some of the pioneers in the field," he explains. "Then, I moved out to TV, and I built out that first generation of digital products, the first streaming apps on mobile and connected TVs."
The stark difference between these worlds struck him immediately. While search and social advertising had sophisticated measurement and optimization capabilities, TV remained largely dependent on traditional metrics that couldn't capture true business impact.
EDO's approach centers on what Krim calls "predictive behaviors" — measurable actions that signal consumer intent and consideration before actual purchases occur. Through a recent integration with The Trade Desk, marketers can now access these insights at scale.
"We're measuring branded searches, branded website visits, app usage after somebody is exposed to an ad across convergent TV, both linear and streaming TV," Krim explains. "What we're seeing is the lift above normal baseline behaviors of people engaging with these brands, entering the funnel, showing signals of consideration and intent that are leading them eventually to purchase, to loyalty with a brand. But you don't have to wait for it."
Rather than the traditional lag time of conversion data, this immediate feedback creates powerful signals that advertisers can use to optimize campaigns while they are still in-flight, across audience segments, media context, creative formats, and messaging.
With near real-time engagement insights, EDO’s platform has a profound impact on creative optimization strategies. Marketers can get feedback on what’s working without waiting on focus groups or brand lift surveys. Rather than replacing human creativity, the data enhances and extends it.
"Modern marketers want to look at the patterns of what their creatives in the past have done, what their competitors have done well or not done well, and that's all influencing their creative judgment," Krim notes. "We don't try to replace any of that. That is, I think, still the best use for human creativity and judgment."
The results speak for themselves: "We'll see creatives recut ads that are working so they can extend the life of a really good creative idea, and they'll cut it into constituent components, take a 30 down to a 15, maybe even a 10 – all based on the data that they're seeing of what's performing."
Looking ahead, Krim is most excited about the potential of Vertical AI – artificial intelligence models purpose-built for advertising. "Our industry is notoriously specific," he emphasizes. "What we're finding is that if you specially build AI models, and train them on industry-specific data sets to solve industry-specific problems, you're going to have a better result than if you take the generic approach."
EDO's Vertical AI advantage is built on unprecedented scale and the industry’s leading TV ad database. "We've taken 10 years of linear TV history, four and a half years of streaming TV history across the whole landscape, and we've trained these models on literally trillions of impressions,” explains Krim.
This massive, TV-specific training dataset enables capabilities and granular insights that wouldn't be possible with generic AI models or traditional data processing methods. "Good quality, accurate data in at large quantities means much better results out," Krim explains. "That is something that only AI models can do. We couldn't process that volume of data and have it be accurate and fast if we threw bodies at that problem."
As the advertising industry continues its shift toward streaming and outcome-based measurement, EDO's decade-long bet on predictive behavioral data and Vertical AI is paying dividends. For Krim, the mission remains focused on enhancing rather than replacing human creativity, while unlocking TV advertising’s full potential.
Curious to learn more about EDO’s approach? Watch Kevin Krim's full interview and explore EDO's latest research on streaming and linear TV insights.