CIMM Cross Platform and Video Measurement and Data Summit Reports Progress

At CIMM’s annual Cross Platform Video Measurement and Data Summit, now in its 8^th year,  Jane Clarke, CEO and Managing Director, CIMM announced the launch of TAXI Complete, a long term initiative dedicated to facilitating cross platform measurement through the use of content labels for programming (EDIR) and ads (Ad-ID).

Panels on labeling, metrics and attribution measurement, deduplicated reach, audience based buying and innovations from CES filled the agenda. Praise was offered from the panelists to Nielsen and comScore for their hard work to keep pace with media measurement, but most agreed that more needed to be done.

Issues include: Walled gardens of data that limit the ability of companies to accurately measure true attribution results, the myriad of advanced advertising solutions from a range of competing companies that are not easily comparable and the, as of now, quiet acquiescence of consumers regarding privacy and the use of their personal data in the age of GDPR.

Clarke’s progress report offers a ray of hope to these issues. She noted that we are closer than ever before in measuring unduplicated reach across media, we are moving more towards content ratings (though still dealing with blind spots), we are improving our ability to measure attribution through smart TV and STB ad exposure data and we have standardized content ID watermarks for content identification.

Some have called for commercial minute ratings, noting the obsolescence of C-3 and C-7. Others called for greater data transparency in order to more fully understand the quality and applicability of the data they are suing. The landscape keeps changing and expanding. There are more and more viewing platforms and data sets that will need to find ways to be incorporated as media consumption behaviors evolve. Self-driving cars, for example, will have screens so we can entertain ourselves while traveling.

The upshot: Obviously much has been accomplished, but just a clearly there is still a lot more work to do.

This article first appeared in Cynopsis.

For more insights and updates on measurement, keep an eye out for Cynopsis’ annual Measurement & Data Conference this summer.