Is On Demand Ready For Primetime Anytime?

We appear to be tantalizingly close to a more comprehensive business, delivery and measurement strategy for On Demand. But perhaps not close enough to create an industry standard just yet. The recent B&C On Demand Summit offered insights into what is being done well, what we can do better and what still needs to be accomplished in the On Demand arena.

There is a lot of good news according to experts in the industry. The number of enabled platforms is increasing, the cost of distribution is declining and the window for dynamic ad insertion is shortening.  Brands are beginning to integrate with content to offer a seamless viewing experience. Research companies are energetically examining second by second return path data that is being matched to IP data and there is greater flexibility than ever in content creation, delivery and access.

As the conference progressed it became clear that there are some important actions that need to be taken sooner than later - those areas where the On Demand business needs to focus to get to an industry standard. A short video that captures some of these topics is linked to here. 

Here are my top ten On Demand issues and next step: Please comment.

Cannibalization – Cannibalization is not inevitable according to Jim Packer from Lionsgate. But there needs to be a careful balancing act for content providers so that content that is available on demand and across platforms does not cannibalize the primary source of the main business, whether linear or in theater, for example.

DAI – The technology is not there yet for more real time insertion. There are still some structural issues to get it closer to almost real time. Thankfully Canoe is focusing all of its energies on addressing DAI.

Transparency – This is primarily a data access issue that is being addressed by Rentrak in partnership with MediaOcean. Agencies will be able to view a transparent transaction report of 60 networks free of charge.

Data merging and measurement – Even though agency software company MediaOcean is beginning to integrate new datasets into its systems (an important step), On Demand data and measurement in general continue to be an area in need of more development. Improvements in data standardization and metrics are being spearheaded via the IAB and the MRC is starting to accredit certain services and methodologies. We need to keep pursuing measurement solutions as a top priority. And let’s not forget the importance of asset identification to facilitate cross platform measurement trackage. 

Scale – How do you get to scale with VOD? It seems that issues like content rights and measurement need to be addressed to help create scale. 

Agency silos – Some agencies are stratified when it comes to media purchasing so broadcast and cable are separate buying departments from digital. Silo’ing is not an efficient way to maximize the purchase value of VOD. Many agencies, realizing this challenge, are being to break down these silos but there is still work to be done in this area.

Valuation- How do you value VOD? Some think of it as an extension of cable. Agency budgets need to migrate and the disparity of CPMs across platforms needs to be addressed. Mike Bologna of GroupM suggested defining hyper target segments so VOD is not just “more cable inventory”.

Educating clients beyond age and gender – VOD enables hyper niche marketing but clients may still gravitate to the simpler age gender categories. Nick Troiano of BlackArrow noted that from a business perspective CPMs for A18-49 offers a higher CPM but hyper-targeting is more efficient. 

Content rights – Let’s face it, rights are expensive. Especially when the content is new and performance is unknown. But without taking the chance of acquiring all the content rights for a program, there is a marketing challenge (brands cannot fully integrate) and a data challenge (the landscape of VOD becomes incomplete for full measurement). 

Rate of change – The rate of change seems to be accelerating. Conference s such as those offered by Mediapost and MultiChannel/B&C continue to bring new and innovative ideas to the industry and help executives keep up to date.

Q&A with Alice Sylvester - Media Behavior Institute

Alice Sylvester started her career in ad agencies before joining Media Behavior Institute as COO. Her deep knowledge of research well prepares her for the creative qual / quant application of MBI’s TouchPoints study. In this interview, Alice talks about TouchPoints, how one measures emotions and the range of emotions that are measureable, agency research applications and some insights into how the media landscape will evolve over the next few years.  

The four videos of the interview are as follows:

Subject                                                 Length (in minutes)

Background                                                  (3:04)

USA TouchPoints                                        (10:03)

Measurements Emotions                             (10:45)

Agencies and Predictions                             (6:01)

Charlene Weisler interviews Media Behavior Institute's Alice Sylvester who talks about her background in this 3:04 minute video:

Alice Sylvester discusses her company's measurement system USA Touchpoints and how it can quantify emotions with Charlene Weisler in this 10:03 minute video:




Charlene Weisler interviews Media Behavior Institute's Alice Sylvester who continues the discussion about measuring emotions through USA Touchpoints, in this 10:45 minute video:


In this final 6:01 minute video, Alice Sylvester shares her insights into agencies and the future landscape of media with interviewer Charlene Weisler;
 
 

Pivot TV Targets the Next Greatest Generation

Pivot TV, Participant Media’s new venture into television, is apt to change the single-screen television paradigm with its blend of multi-screen programming formats targeted to Millennials and their media usage tastes.

You may be familiar with Participant Media as the company that produces a blend of progressive and blockbuster films (think Food Inc and Lincoln). Their expansion from the big screen into the small screen comes with Pivot TV which will go live this August. Millennials who Participant CEO Jim Berk calls the new Greatest Generation seek entertainment that, like Participant, inspires and accelerates social change. Whether it is in their digital platform TakePart.com that connects content and actions together or their launch of Pivot TV, Participant Media encourages their audience to think and take action. 

Pivot TV President Evan Shapiro has always been a supporter of research. So it is not surprising that he used research to help craft Pivot TV’s brand promise and position with a study of 3200 15-24 year olds. The result was three target segments for Pivot TV: Allies who seek socially relevant content, Clicktivists who expand their influence online and Young Heroes who are true on-the-street activists. All three clusters are “pivotal” to MVPDs as well since they are the generation that operators need to reach for future subscriber growth. According to Shapiro, the target cluster groups are very politically progressive and seek the same attitudes from businesses. So there is a psychographic element to branding to these consumers that offer a connection that goes beyond strictly age and demo.

To capture these trans-media consumers, SVP Research Karen Ramspacher, has created an innovative measurement called the Participant Impact Index. “We are going to look at what people are thinking about and doing over thirty social action causes that the company has identified as important. We are going to look at their impact on the world and the impact on the viewer of different pieces of media around those issues.” This index will measure all types of programs across many networks and can also measure the halo affect for advertisers within that environment.

At their launch party back in March, Shapiro introduced several new original series, many with second screen elements.  Their variety show HitRecord TV is a good example.  Re-inventing an old program format – the variety show - Pivot TV is launching a multi-screen version that uses a community of cutting edge artists who perform across all available platforms. The result is a fascinating program offering that has the potential to draw in a new audience across several entertainment platforms and showcase new talent. An overview of the programming can be viewed in this video:

Can Pivot TV make its mark on the programming landscape for Millennials who are measured across platforms and attitudes? Stayed tuned for their launch in August 2013.

Cross Platform Measurement with Help From CIMM

One of the most frenetic areas of measurement development today is in cross platform. Creative and scalable solutions are being crafted that enable programmers and advertisers to gain a more complete picture of how the usage of various media platforms compare to and blend within each other.  There is no standard yet, but there are a myriad of possible semi-solutions that can link some, but not yet all, platforms under one metric. Progress is being made and it is only a matter of time (and data) before we get to a complete and scale-able measurement.

CIMM’s annual Summit this past week focused on cross platform measurement. True to its name and mission, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement seeks to transform the way audiences are measured. Managing Director Jane Clarke has a clear vision of CIMM’s mission in cross platform and has been a great advocate of advancements in measurement. She said, “This year’s Summit showcased that exciting new methodologies to better understand the complexities of cross-platform media measurement are being formed, and the industry as a whole is taking notice.”

The half day meeting included an update on CIMM’s TAXI (Trackable Asset Cross Platform Identifier) Initiative which CIMM launched two years ago and which CIMM continues to support in the form of project investment and analyses. TAXI’s importance is being recognized. Jane explained that “the widespread industry adoption of Ad-ID and EIDR coding for all advertising and video content assets, the goal of our TAXI initiative, received resounding support from Summit attendees.”

TAXI, with its advocacy of a UPC type standard for content (both programming and advertising) across all platforms, is one very important area of need in developing cogent measurement. And the need goes beyond measurement. Citing the four “R’s of asset identification, Research, Royalties, Rights and Residuals, it is clear that the importance of verifying asset exposure across platforms serves many purposes. While TAXI's first recommendation is to register assets using Ad-ID and EIDR, there is also an initiative to develop an open standard for binding the metadata to the asset, so it won't be lost through transcoding and compression. This may be with a watermark or fingerprint technology (ACR) or by using the closed captioning space in TV broadcasting. 

In a panel on the Roadmap for Cross-Platform “Exposure” Measurement, the value of asset identification was estimated to be $2.5 billion in recurring economic benefit to the industry. So this issue is no small stakes and the challenges to overcome are not difficult, costly or insurmountable. Janice Finkel-Greene of MAGNA Global gave one example. “Without a standard, it is hard to get show titles to match”. Titles are input by humans and even a simple miss-spelling can cause hours of extra clean-up work. Once a standard code is appended to all content, the match will be based on the code itself and not the capricious spelling of the content title. As Harold Geller of Ad-ID explained, “If you can’t identify it, you can’t operationalize it. If you can’t operationalize it you can’t measure it. And if you can’t measure it you can’t monetize it.” That in itself should be a compelling argument for the adoption of a standard coding system.

ESPN has embarked on an ambitious hybrid solution for cross platform measurement with Project Blueprint combining TV, Radio, PC and Mobile data via Arbitron and comScore. As ESPN’s Artie Bulgrin explains, “The knowledge gaps about how people consume media across multiple platforms are growing and so are the business implications. Our goal is not to create new currencies, but to provide an essential layer of research that begins to mitigate those gaps with a scalable, on-going measurement solution. What makes Project Blueprint so unique is that it combines the breadth of reporting from ‘big data’ measures (census analytics) with the depth of persons-level data from single-source panels.” 

 

All in all, the CIMM Summit proved to be an industry changing event, moving asset identification and cross platform measurement forward. “Our event was a success,” Jane Clarke said, “and CIMM will continue sparking discussions to help marketers make smarter ad buy decisions and receive better return on their ad dollar investments.” 

A solution to cross platform measurement appears closer than ever.