ANA Aquila Expands Cross-Media Advertising Measurement

29 September 2026: The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) announced updates to Aquila, its independent platform for measuring advertising reach and frequency across media channels.

Aquila combines ad exposure data from digital platforms and television to estimate how many unique people a brand's advertising reached and how often they encountered its messages.

At the ANA Measurement & Analytics Conference in Chicago, the team previewed an updated interface and announced plans to expand beyond video advertising to static display ads, audio, and other digital formats.

According to Aquila CEO Bill Tucker, the service had 28 paying advertisers by late September. The company expects that number to grow to 70 over the following year.

What ANA Aquila Does

Aquila is a technology initiative of the Association of National Advertisers, a U.S. trade association representing advertisers.

The project was established in 2024 to address a fundamental media measurement challenge: the lack of independent, consolidated audience reach measurement across different advertising platforms.

Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, and other platforms each report their own impressions, reach, and frequency metrics. But simply adding those figures does not reveal the actual reach of a campaign across all channels.

The same person may see a brand's ad on YouTube, then Instagram, later TikTok, and several times on television. Each platform counts that person within its own reach figures. Summing the numbers can count the same individual multiple times.

Aquila is designed to remove that duplication and produce a consolidated view of advertising exposure.

Its core metrics include:

• Deduplicated Reach: The number of unique people reached across multiple platforms without double-counting overlapping audiences.
• Cross-Media Frequency: Total advertising exposure frequency across channels.
• Audience Overlap: The extent to which audiences overlap between advertising platforms.
• Incremental Reach: The additional unique reach contributed by a particular channel.
• Reach and Frequency Distribution: How audiences are distributed by the number of advertising exposures.

These measures help advertisers evaluate a media plan as an integrated set of audience interactions, rather than a collection of isolated campaigns.

How Aquila's Measurement Technology Works

Aquila uses advertising impression data provided by participating platforms and independent measurement companies. Its architecture brings together several components.

Advertising Platform Data

Google, Meta, Amazon, and TikTok are among the project's technology partners. Rather than relying only on aggregate reports from ad accounts, Aquila receives advertising exposure data from participating platforms. This enables more detailed analysis of audience overlap.

Support for any particular advertising platform depends on the stage of its integration.

Television Audience Measurement

Aquila works with independent measurement providers to incorporate television ad exposures. Comscore supplies linear television measurement data, while Samba TV contributes streaming television measurement based on viewing data.

These inputs make it possible to include television advertising in an overarching measurement model alongside digital campaigns.

Virtual ID: Deduplicating Audiences

A core technical component is Aquila's Virtual ID system, which helps reconcile separate ad exposure records from different sources.

The platform does not require Google, Meta, or other providers to disclose users' personal identifiers to advertisers. Instead, it uses a privacy-conscious, protected data-matching model.

Based on the available signals, Aquila estimates which ad exposures correspond to the same people or households. Additional research data helps improve the model's accuracy.

Kantar Media Calibration Panel

Kantar Media is developing a research panel of U.S. households for the project. In 2025, Aquila announced the launch of a panel covering more than 1,000 households, with plans to expand it to approximately 5,000.

The panel data calibrates the models used to match advertising exposures. This is necessary because platform data alone cannot directly identify every audience overlap between independent ad systems.

Aquila's results therefore rely not only on direct identifier matching but also on statistical modeling and research data.

Which Advertising Platforms and Formats Aquila Supports

In March 2026, the ANA announced the beginning of Aquila's commercial rollout. The first phase covered data from Meta, YouTube, and linear television. Integrations involving TikTok, Amazon, and iHeartRadio were planned for the second half of 2026.

In September, the team outlined plans for a further expansion of measurement coverage.

Initially, Aquila focused primarily on video advertising:

• Linear TV: Traditional television.
• Connected TV: Advertising delivered through connected television devices.
• Streaming Video: Ads within streaming services.
• Online Video: Video advertising on digital platforms.

The developers now plan to add other digital advertising formats, notably static display ads and audio advertising. Aquila is therefore evolving from a video measurement solution into a cross-media measurement system covering a broader mix of advertising formats.

Announced integrations and expansion plans should not be interpreted as confirmation that every listed platform and format is already available to every customer.

Early Measurement Results

Some advertisers tested the platform before its commercial launch. In March 2026, the ANA presented findings from Aquila testing on Uber advertising campaigns.

The analysis showed that actual campaign reach was higher than planned, while average exposure frequency was less than half the planned level. The findings illustrated how figures from individual media platforms can differ substantially from consolidated campaign metrics.

Another example came from Come Near, which analyzed audience overlap for an advertising campaign associated with the Super Bowl.

In both cases, Aquila was used to assess how exposures were distributed across channels. Such studies are intended to identify excessive repetition and determine which channels can add unique reach.

Incremental reach is not the same as incremental sales. Aquila measures the distribution of ad exposure. Estimating incremental sales and other business outcomes requires additional methods, including experiments and marketing mix modeling.

Aquila's Updated Commercial Model

At the September conference, CEO Bill Tucker described an updated approach to paying for Aquila. Advertisers were offered two options:

• Direct platform payment: The customer pays for access to the measurement platform under a commercial agreement.
• Fractional Advertising Contribution: Fees may be calculated as a portion of ad spending processed through the relevant media infrastructure.

The second option moves the cost of measurement to the media spending processing stage. Mediaocean has been discussed as a technology partner for that model.

Public pricing and exact fee rates were not disclosed at the time of the announcement. Aquila is primarily aimed at large advertisers running campaigns across multiple digital platforms and traditional media.

Aquila, WFA Halo, and the UK's Origin

Aquila is part of a broader international effort to standardize advertising measurement. In the United States, the project implements the Halo architecture developed with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). A comparable initiative in the United Kingdom is called Origin.

Both aim to provide independent, comparable cross-platform advertising reach measurement in an industry where media providers traditionally rely on proprietary analytics systems.

A common architecture may facilitate international cross-media measurement standards. However, it does not mean advertisers already have a single global tool covering all campaigns. Each national system is evolving around local data sources, partner integrations, and regulatory requirements.

What the Expansion Means for Advertisers

Aquila's September update marks a shift from development and testing toward commercial use. It had attracted 28 paying advertisers and was continuing to expand its advertising platform integrations.

The next stage aims to move beyond video advertising toward a broader set of digital formats. Its main technical distinction is the ability to analyze combined reach and frequency without simply adding platform-reported audience counts.

For advertisers with substantial cross-channel media spending, that creates a basis for more precise media planning and better control over excessive ad frequency across platforms.