Ethan Rapp recently joined Simulmedia as SVP Program
Management, bringing “deep experience in marketing effectiveness as well as
developing insights and analysis that help define new media paradigms,” according
to Mainak Mazumdar, Simulmedia’s Chief Science Officer.
Rapp was an early innovator in digital research at
DoubleClick in its formative years and has held senior research roles at AOL,
Conde Nast and Knowledge Networks. He also co-founded Marketing Evolution a
leading cross media measurement firm.
Currently,
Rapp is responsible for the Simulmedia’s Business Outcomes measurement programs
which combine TV viewership data from set top box data with behavioral data including
transactions and online activity from various sources. These sources can
include credit card data, "First Party" CRM databases and online data
management providers like Oracle’s Marketing Cloud.
I sat down with Rapp and asked him the following
questions:
CW: Ethan, what do your “Business Outcomes”
capabilities enable Simulmedia to do?
ER: We now have the ability to look at client specific
"Business Outcomes" relative to Simulmedia television buys AND other television
and online components of the client's campaign. Examples of these outcomes can
include: offline sales, online sales, basket sizes, transactions by customer
segment, online behaviors, etc. It’s really an effort to look at media’s direct
impact on a client’s goals in a very transparent way and at the same time
demonstrate the value of Simulmedia’s audience targeting.
It should be noted that because we do a lot of “data
matching”; we take great precautions to protect privacy, and in fact never ever
touch personally identifiable data ourselves; we always use trusted third
parties
CW: How does this work with clients?
ER: This has become a critical part of the Simulmedia
offering as we are now guaranteeing
that our media will produce better business outcomes than traditional
television buying and planning. We provide money back if we don’t improve
overall business outcomes relative to the TV buy made without us. This is a
huge step in the industry and takes any perceived risk out of audience buying
for the client.
This measurement is provided at no additional charge with
a minimum media buy. While we have no intention to become a research company, a
lot of what we do is unavailable elsewhere, especially because we can see all
TV consumed, including our buy, the other buys of our clients, and even their competitors
buys. So as you can imagine, there is a lot of analysis we have the capability
to do that doesn’t exist elsewhere. Our analysis can and should inform future
planning and buying (that is what makes it truly closed loop).
CW:
Where is television measurement heading? Will it become more digitally based
with connected TVs?
ER: The interesting thing that has happened to TV in the last
couple of years is that digital has provided pressure on the CMO and CFO to
provide ROI across more media. Until recently, TV has not been able to deliver the
same level of visibility that digital can provide. Recently however we have
gained access to this great treasure trove of set top box data, which allows us
to do far better targeting and measurement.
CW: What do you think the common metrics will be to
facilitate cross platform measurement?
ER: I think the “must have” in the industry requires that the
metrics for digital media, and the metrics for TV need to eventually align. I
don’t think that the result should be the GRP, regardless of how entrenched it
is currently. I think it needs to be at a person level, or at least a household
level because that is what will enable the understanding of efficiency in media
planning. Eventually it needs to be business outcomes. That’s our job. Improve
the ability for companies to grow their bottom line with their ad spending.
CW: Is ROI only about the client’s immediate return on a
specific campaign or is it broader than that?
ER: The metric has to be at a level where we can measure
individuals and markets. Buyers will want to know where they can specifically
place efficient media to influence people and move market share, both in the
short term and long term. They want to know where they are gaining share from
and where they are losing it. ROI needs to be framed by the specific goals of
the marketer. That’s why we work so hard to make our targeting so robust and our
measurement tailored to each client.
I can’t think of a single marketer whose goal is anything
other than profitable growth. They crave information to make media decisions on
how to optimize their budgets against profitable growth. They want to be able
to measure the behaviors and the performance of their spending. The pressure to
show ROI or any metric that directly correlates to ROI is what is driving the
evolution of media planning. That evolution is now picking up speed and digital
has had a lot to do with that. Simulmedia is bringing that online
accountability to TV.
CW: What are the greatest differences between digital and TV?
ER: The differences are substantial right now. Objectively there
are probably more differences than there are similarities. From a creative
standpoint TV gives you emotion. TV gives you reach. TV gives you a brand
identity over the short -and long term. Digital has never really proven to do
those things in a scalable, lasting way. On the other hand, digital is great
for highly targeted buys, to be able to drive short term sales, the ability to optimize
and activate in real-time, based on how audiences behave, and to a certain
extent create targeted awareness. It is very flexible as a medium. It is a lot
harder to create a new campaign in TV in a couple of days where in digital you
can create one in a couple of hours. Of course the goal is the same – to drive
sales. With all that said, TV is still the most dominant medium against almost
any metric you can think of, especially consumption and influence. The imminent
death of TV is highly overstated and we are innovating in ways that make it
more targeted and more measurable.
This article first appeared in www.Mediabizbloggers.com
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