Dr. Hannu Verkasalo, CEO of Verto Analytics, started out
as an entrepreneur straight out of school. “I built a few consulting
companies using my skills in data analytics, and helped big telcos in Europe to
better measure and understand their consumers,” he explained, before moving
into building technology products. He added, “Throughout my career, I’ve always
focused on constant learning, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with top
talent and forward-looking customers.”
Charlene Weisler: Tell me about your
company.
Hannu
Verkasalo: Verto Analytics is the world's first consumer-centric media
measurement company. We independently collect data in the market, using a
unique panel-based single-source audience measurement approach. We track
consumer media behavior across all platforms and channels, 24/7. Based on our
methodology, we’ve built a set of media measurement products and services.
Using an information-as-a-service model, we help big brands and technology
companies understand their competitive landscape, monetize their audience, and
better target advertising dollars in a cross-platform omni-channel world. We
are based in Helsinki, Finland, with offices in New York City, San Francisco
and London and are venture-capital backed.
Charlene Weisler: What are the viewing
behaviors of the cross-device consumer?
Hannu
Verkasalo: The cross-device consumer is becoming the norm. Close to 75%
of American adults use at least two devices per month and almost 40% use at
least three. Smartphones are used throughout the day, PC use peaks in the
daytime, and tablets have gained market share during prime time versus TV use.
The next generation of consumers is going to be even more mobile-centric versus
being tethered to a PC or a TV.
Charlene Weisler: What is the most
important cross-device metric for advertisers?
Hannu
Verkasalo: Net reach, which is defined as the total number of unique,
unduplicated viewers of an ad or unique count of consumers for specific
content. It’s critical for advertisers to gauge the net audience that a given
campaign or selected properties can potentially reach - regardless of the
channel or device.
Charlene Weisler: How can you measure
attention and engagement?
Hannu
Verkasalo: Attention by tracking what people see on the foreground of
their devices and whether people take actions based on the content they see. Do
they make a purchase or leave the app only to return five minutes later? We
measure every user interaction with the device second-by-second. One of the
most popular metrics to measure attention is the cross-device clickstreams
people go through based on a trigger, like search, advertising or social. We
have built some metrics to quantify this.
Engagement
by counting the seconds people use a specific service, app, or site, on the
screen. We track this second-by-second, validating exactly what people do and
for how long. One of the popular new metrics for engagement we have invented is
stickiness: Services that have a high stickiness rating also have high loyalty
and attention among users.
Charlene Weisler: Is the lack of an
industry standard content ID protocol a challenge in measuring cross device
comparably across advertisers? Media companies? Marketers?
Hannu
Verkasalo: Visibility into what consumers are doing cross-platform is an
enormous challenge for the industry. You hear that from media companies,
marketers and advertisers. We address this challenge with our single-source
passive measurement panel. Rather than measuring device use by tying together
data from a mobile panel or PC panel, we measure engagement of a single
consumer across all devices and content. We connect all that cross-device
activity back to that unique consumer.
Charlene Weisler: If so, how can we get to
an industry standard?
Hannu
Verkasalo: Consumer behavior has changed more in the last five years
than the past 50. Consumers switch between multiple devices and services
throughout the day, but many companies still struggle with measuring this
behavior due to lack of visibility and measurement methods that don’t do a good
job of quantifying consumer behavior. The industry needs a modern measurement
standard to meet the demands of brands, advertisers and publishers. Media
companies, like Turner, Viacom and many others are stepping up to the plate to
lead that charge.
Charlene Weisler: What makes your company
different from others in the space?
Hannu
Verkasalo: We are the only audience measurement company that measures all media
usage, 24/7, across all platforms and devices. We work with leading brands to
assess and define modern use cases for this type of media measurement data from
product development and road mapping to media planning and consumer insights.
This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com
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