Cynopsis Measurement and Data Conference 2021 - My Recap

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

It is simple to say that the media landscape has changed during the pandemic but, truthfully, media has had a robust history of change, transformation and adaption. This is why the annual Cynopsis Measurement and Data conference remains so pivotal and relevant, as experts meet and discuss a range of vital subjects. As it was last year, the 2021 conference was virtual. Cynopsis would like to thank our sponsors, who helped make this year’s conference successful: a4 Advertising, AppScience, Conviva, DISQO, EDO, iSpot.tv, Kochava, Matrix, Media Ad Sales Council, New York Interconnect, Nielsen, Premion, TEGNA, TiVo, VAB, and Vevo.

TUESDAY, JUNE 15

The Art of Combining Data Sets
With all of the disparate data sets currently available to marketers and researchers, what are the best practices to normalize and merge them? Data expert Craig Berkley, whose background included stints at Charter and Mastercard, moderated a panel with panelists Anthony Iaffaldano, VP, Head of Global B2B Marketing and Insights, Fandom and Lisa Giacosa, President & Global Head of Data, Technology, Analytics and Insights, Spark Foundry. All three understood the out-sized role of data in business today with a plethora of datasets from first to third party. But how can these often disparate datasets best be merged for accuracy and insights?

For both Iaffaldano and Giacosa, the answer lies in owning their own first party data and combining that data with other sets with contextual data, both first and third party, to gain further insights.

Iaffaldano’s company, Fandom, is a data centered business that powers 250,000 fan wikis which, as he explained, “are interesting ways to segment and build targets.” Fandom gathers their own first party data like traffic to their different communities. “We can find fans wherever they are and find interest. General interest data like interest in a car to help maximize sponsorships, Interest and transaction to see consumers at the end point.”
For Giacosa, an acquisition of a data powered company like Epsilon facilitates the, “understanding of those human beings behind the data. Who they are and how they transact. How people shop, behave, interacting with brands how they feel. Take all the data and build the big picture. Close the loop and measure as well.”

But, Berkley asked, “how to combine? What data sets do you add?” Giacosa responded, “It depends on the objective for the business campaign. That influences the data set we use. If we have first party data, we can match it back. We look at contextual data such as Amazon and Google and third party data that enables us to understand purchase intent.”

Iaffaldano agreed. “We work with clients with different data needs. It helps to start with scale. We bring in external sources.” He explained that in the entertainment genre, Fandom does a good job of drilling down because of the compatibility of the data sets. For other categories, they seek other deterministic sources. “That is where the art of the data science comes into play. Pushing folks down the funnel to get to highly relevant customers is always the goal. How much more valuable is it that we can reach fans in movies and put butts in seats. It’s driven by client demand and where we have the biggest impact,” he concluded.

Having specific datasets is essential, such as location data, an area that is still in need of improvement. In addition it is essential to have, as Berkley pointed out, “A commercial graph or on-boarder to connect A and B as well as a clean environment to analyze the dataset.” Iaffaldano noted that Fandom, “Experimented with clean rooms, but it only makes sense if there is a longer term use case investment.”

Creating a clean room is expensive. “We are working on a clean room integration now for a video game publisher. But these are few and far between.” Giacosa added, “It starts with identification and resolution. We work with fully fledged clean rooms and everything in between. What is the business objective you are trying to achieve? We also work with open source platforms but with IOS 14.6 we are starting to see different challenges.”

Cost, for Giacosa, is a critical piece. “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” she asked. “Is that $10 incremental worth it? When we apply this, does it deliver? If so, great. Then it can become a self-funding machine.” One needs to consider, “How many data sources there are and how we need collaboration and integration. We need to make sure it pays off in ROI to clients.”

High Anxiety: Why you need outcome measurement for Convergent TV
Cynopsis’ Lynn Leahey engaged in a one-on-one discussion with Kevin Krim, CEO, EDO, regarding the importance of deep funnel measurement for television. EDO is a data science company with software and automated push reporting for convergent TV advertising. “TV landscape is at a watershed moment,” Krim began. “There is fear and doubt.” His company defines convergent TV as any service that offers premium TV quality programming with non-skippable ads. That includes a range of platforms such as national, addressable and AVOD. All of which are “not short form with skippable video,” he noted.

Television in all of its forms is a, “$214 billion ad marketplace. The landscape is complex and hard to visualize,” he stated, so, “you need a partner like EDO to understand the TV landscape. It’s supply and demand. Viewers are adopting non-linear TV in droves. TV monthly usage is below 40% of time spent recently (where the time) goes to mostly non-add supported video like Netflix. Non-linear TV supply is scarce and small supply and is nearly sold out. It is a high anxiety moment that brands are facing. They are trading more affordable linear TV with its reach for non-liner.”

It is important, Krim explained, for television to demonstrate their value and justify their high CPMs. “My CMO friends are being exposed. What do you do? Show your performance,” he advised, explaining that, “Owners of the most valuable inventory should get the full credit for the value they are delivering.” In the case of a company like CNBC, which attracted a desirable audience that did not fit neatly into the age/gender constraints of the Nielsen currency, he revealed that, “CNBC abandoned Nielsen and sold our business inventory on non-guarantee basis.”

It is vital that all exigent factors be taken into account when assessing the success of a campaign. Take, for example, the re-launch of Volkswagon’s Jetta that coincided with the 2018 World Cup. “We were working with Fox sports and Volkswagen and signed up with a big sponsorship for the World Cup,” he explained. “The campaign ran and EDO was able to show real time performance. But sales data declined. We asked why. It turns out that the factories fell behind in production. There were no sales because there was no inventory. Sometimes other issues are the reason for the results. Don’t get graded on the wrong metrics for your success,” he strongly advised.

All in all, “Expect more from your TV metrics. You can expect real economic value from your TV inventory buy. Begin by monitoring your campaign in real time. Don’t take it for granted that things in the past can predict the future. We can expect that now with the type of data quality we have. And we can expect more. We can plan media campaigns with 90% confidence,” he advised.

Automating the Ad Buy
How can marketers and sellers create a more fluid and automatic advertising process through the media ecosystem? Mark Gorman, CEO, Matrix, explained how his company streamlines self-serve inventory ad buys. “The cold truth is that advertising spend continues to increase but our share of the pie is decreasing,” he warned. “Google, Facebook, Amazon etc., accounted for over 50% of all ad spend.” Google, he noted, had $146.9 billion ad revenues. These companies offer an ease of purchase with little government regulation.

So what are the four obstacles to increasing the share of the ad pie for television?
1. Infrastructure, consisting of content delivery systems and technology, is, “a massive pain point.” He noted that, “Content delivery systems have exploded. The way ads are delivered on these systems have different technologies with different ecosystems. Some are old and antiquated. Some are incredibly modern. None of these systems work together and none talk together.”
2. Standardization of measurement. There is a need to change and have conversations regarding impressions by finding a human solution. Gorman recommends, “Talking about outcomes based sales instead of impressions. Advertisers care about outcomes.”
3. Agree on business rules of buy and sell. “Look at how ads are bought and sold and how demand comes in,” he stated.
4. Technology that underlies sales process. “We need systems to create a better sales system,” Gorman explained. “Today there are disparate systems with no coordination.”

Best Use Cases for Multi-Platform Measurement
A continuing hot topic for the industry is the challenge of cross-platform measurement. Jane Clarke, CEO, Managing Director, CIMM, has been spearheading this issue for many years. Her panel brought George Musi, EVP and Chief Executive Officer, FCBHealth, IPG, Rob Jayson, EVP, Insights & Analytics at USIM, Helen Lum, EVP, App Science and Mariel Estrada, VP, Cross-Platform Measurement & Strategy, WarnerMedia together to share their best practices and success stories.

Clarke opened up the panel by setting the landscape. “There are quite a few ways that different parts of the media ecosystem look at the multi-platform measurement challenge,” she began. “It’s because of this that both the buy and sell side of the industry are developing proprietary data and tech stacks, and proprietary measurement tools and techniques, to address their particular challenge.”

How are agencies managing this overall challenge for their clients? For Jayson, “We have basically moved back from attempting to find total unduplicated reach across all platforms that we are placing media on for our clients because it doesn’t seem feasible at the moment. And our source of truth has become sales which, in the end, whether its sales or website traffic or app downloads – whatever the client’s ultimate goal is – we have to start with a source of truth and that is what we work to.”

Musi noted that agencies have been, “Dealing with this ‘issue slash opportunity’ for a long time. The ‘ask’ hasn’t changed, the parameters have. People invest money in marketing that drives sales. They have to do it through many mechanisms. One of those mechanisms is actually getting people to think, feel, do and behave the way we want them to behave. In that construct there are a lot of things that we measure so that we can actually recalibrate.” Clients need to understand the necessity of repetition and reinforcement to better understand the behavior.

On the programming content side, Estrada noted that WarnerMedia has had significant user growth on their platforms, employing contextual targeting and cross platform attribution and leveraging datasets to see how they can best diversify solutions. “Our biggest priority,” she added, “is identity and first party data. We have a plethora of direct consumer relationships with multiple touchpoints … The launch of HBO Max with ads will help us grow our authenticated user base and give use granular insights.”

Lum’s company, App Science, focuses on the new video platforms of CTV/OTT and as such, she is focused on solving for all of the issues that previous panelists described. Embarking on a major ad campaign and using multiple partners, “Duplication becomes an issue,” she explained. “Ninety percent of CTV inventory can be accessed by anyone. We are constantly hearing from our clients concerns around transparency, duplication, over saturation, these fragmented reports that provide post campaign that is not as actionable. We wanted to help brands by building a real-time agnostic report that provides insights across all of the streaming platforms and be able to provide actual insights to help identify where they are duplicating their spending.”

As Clarke concluded, “We still haven’t solved the problem. There is still a lot of testing and learning left to do. But there is progress being made.”

Why OTT Ad Dollars are Wasted Without Knowing Incremental Reach & Frequency
Jen Russell, VP Head of East Sales, Gamut (Cox Media Group) and Stuart Schwartzapfel, SVP Media Partnerships, iSpot.tv shared the spotlight to discuss the importance of measuring incremental reach and frequency so that OTT ad dollar spend is maximized and not wasted.

Gamut and iSpot.tv cultivated a partnership over the past year. For Russell, Gamut, “Competes with our products and wins with people, our partners and clients by delivering proven impact for our partners. With our partnership with iSpot, we are not grading our own homework. With our partnerships we always are delivering on incrementality and it’s seamless. And it proves out what we always say, show, don’t tell.”

Schwartzapfel shared that, “We looked across our one hundred unified clients in iSpot who we track CTV for and found that about 27% of total viewership for OTT in our panel was from streaming platforms. But conversely, total number of ad impressions delivered streaming platforms made up about 5% so the amount of ad impressions being delivered are out of whack considering how much content is being consumed.”

iSpot.tv demonstrated the benefits of investing in OTT. “It’s all about incrementality and how you slice it,” stated Schwartzapfel. The results from all the campaigns iSpot launched with Gamut were the delivery of $2.2b impressions, 400+ unique advertisers and 3104 campaigns.

Attribution – Where Are We Now?
If there is one subject that has continued to challenge marketers, it is attribution. While there is no standard industry solution at this time, great strides have been made in the last couple of years. On this panel, moderator Paul Donato, Chief Research Officer, The ARF joined with panelists Jessica Daigle, VP, Sales Intelligence Tegna, John Vilade, VP, Head of Sales Premion and Sunil Soman, Senior Director Custom Research, WarnerMedia to discuss some of the new techniques and systems for tracking the consumer journey. Tegna, is a local media company with 64 TV stations and top 50 websites. Premion, offers local TV OTT and CTV advertising in all 110 DMAs and has Tegna as a parent company. The company serves advertisers across all categories – both national and spot local buyers.

Moderator Donato launched the panel with a question on preparing for IOS 14.5 and the demise of third party cookies. Soman indicated that, “We are very fortunate that a large portion of our inventory takes place on spots that are not relying on cookies. We rely on first party data direct to the consumer. We have a firm handle on first party data in a privacy compliant way using deterministic matching. That is internally. Outwardly, we are looking out at the industry for a universal ID.”

Diagle noted that, “We are working on bolstering our first party data. There is a need to make it simple. Right now it is really complicated for local advertisers. We want to get control of the first party data discovering, for a local business, who bought couches from me, who downloaded my app. That’s when the cool stuff happens.”

For Donato, “Genre and contextual targeting are really important. In addition to attribution, the era of ‘set and forget media’ is over. We need to add contextual and new taxonomies to this environment. Marketers are becoming aware of it and they are looking for timely data insights. Return on ad spend has never before been so tracked. We need to create more agility and look at creative efficacy. It’s all about growing a bigger business, down to the geo level.”

When it comes to Google floc and sandboxes, for Soman, “It is not a major part of my team’s work. Idea of flocs, like contextual targeting, is based on what content you are using.” Diagle recommends that you need to, “Own your own data. Then this isn’t as big of a deal as it would be otherwise. I learned this past year that things change really fast.” And Vilade added, “Conversions, reach and brand lift are on the minds of all marketers.”

When it comes to privacy, the consensus was that we need more standardization. Vilade noted the importance of tracking what will happen in big technology: “It is not an equal playing field.” Every vendor has a different privacy solution and the industry has to come together and support GDPR. Soman added that, “Privacy is not going away or going backward. Getting a handle on privacy helps us protect first party data.”

Read the Room: Doing Better with Contextual Targeting
Natalia Irmin, Director Data Strategies and Kevin O'Reilly, SVP of Product, Data and
Monetization, a4, showcased how their company is perfecting contextual targeting with rich databases and state-of-the-art systems.

For O’Reilly, “There are many different touchpoints in the ecosystem. Contextual targeting is getting richer and more informative.” Irmin noted that, “The cookie is crumbling. What do we do when the cookie goes away?”

Irmin outlined the importance of contextual advertising. It is growing, it is effective, has a positive impact on KPIs and a positive impact on the consumer. The advantage of contextual advertising is in brand health where you can identify and evaluate the page content to eliminate the risk of placing the ad in negative content, with AI-driven accuracy and privacy compliance.

For now, the solution is in a hybrid plan for sustainability, accuracy and reliability by combining a contextual strategy with an authenticated dataset like those on which TV and CTV are based. In this way we can optimize delivery to real humans and measurement on true performance. DMPs will have to transform or become a context management platform, she predicted.

Post-Covid. A Look Back and A Look Forward
This past year was a year like no other with the pandemic jolting businesses, stressing supply chains, revamping work conditions and upending media consumption. In this look-back and look-forward panel, moderator Jim Langell, Senior Account Executive, Bloomberg News and Quick Take, polled Radha Subramanyam, Chief Research & Analytics Officer/President, CBS Vision, CBS, Sean Fassett, VP Research, NewsNation and Helen Katz, EVP, Research, Publicis Media on how their businesses reacted, adapted and strategized throughout this most unusual time.

Langell addressed the elephant in the room – the recent news about Nielsen under reporting during Covid. “We are still working our way through it,” noted Katz. “We need to unpack and understand the levels of the under reporting and what it means to currency and trading. It’s been a challenge.”

For Subramanyam, this poses tactical challenges and issues. “Underreporting is a fact - up to 6% - based on a small sample. We are all partners here and the media ecosystem is strong. We are coming in with eyes open. In fact, the challenge has led to opportunity. A multi-currency future is here, merging data from many sources. The future is multi-currency working through with ecosystem partners.” For Langell, “Nielsen has been the currency decades. Comscore is offering a different approach. How can we analyze?”

Fassett noted, “Competition is good but the infrastructure is fragile. There are multiple platforms and technologies and we have to change our mindsets as to how to measure. Currently, consumers are getting smart about cookie blockers and privacy issues. We can now work to bring multiple companies together.”

“It is not about one versus the other,” Subramanyam said, “It is about a much broader ecosystem and robust initiatives. Our data in the connected TV universe from our propriety platforms is as crucial as any third party data. It is census based data. I have never felt more bullish.”

Measurement Currency – Has it Changed?
How long have we been talking about a move away from selling on age and gender demographics? With more and more non-binary datasets available, the answer is “too long”. More systems promise to guarantee on actual KPIs. If these can be proven out, is it time to reassess and revise demographic guarantees, and if so how? Moderator Hadassa Gerber, EVP Chief Research Officer, TVB and panelists Kimberly Gilberti, SVP Product Management, Nielsen, Graeme Hutton, SVP Group Partner, Universal McCann and Maggie Zhang, Head of OTT Measurement ad Research, Amazon Advertising, expanded the range of that discussion.

Hutton’s agency is, “shifting to advanced audiences which are high value audiences. We did an optimization last year and we are shifting more clients to advanced audiences. National broadcast is moving rapidly to high value audience demos & we’re encouraging clients to shift.”

For Zhang, “We define HVA as all interactions that translate into first party signals. This is what we mean by advanced audiences - first party data. Our advertisers use both demo and first party. Overall, for OTT campaigns that leveraged both demo and advanced audiences, they do +33% better in consideration.” Gilberti noted that Nielsen advanced audiences go beyond age and gender and across any category or demo. Hutton defined HVA as any custom defined audience that is not a pre-packaged.

Gerber asked, “Can planning metrics be posted on? Do we need different metrics for planning and executing?” For Hutton, “We understand reach and frequency in a campaign. It indicates how we can influence. Local advertisers are big fans of impressions. From a strategic POV, reach is very important. The issue is price of measurement which is important. Reach across channels is becoming more difficult and we have not solved for that yet.”

Nielsen sees all kinds of use cases. “Look at size of universe you want to measure,” advised Gilberti, “Some segments are more robust than others. We are also integrating big data sets like STB data so we have larger sample sizes.”

“Our audience scale grows reach monthly,” according to Zhang. “We are confident with the overall size of our audience that we can deliver. Advertisers have diverse needs and objectives so one size does not fit all.”

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16

Reimagining Measurement of Sports Sponsorships with Deterministic Broadcast TV Data
Leading off Day 2, Fariba Zamaniyan, VP, Advanced TV Data Sales and Client Service, TiVo and Brandon Nutting, Director of Data Science and Advanced Analytics, MVPindex highlighted the importance of their partnership in leveraging TiVo data to measure sports at every touch point and offer brands, properties and agencies 360-degree coverage of their premium sports sponsorships.

There has been a new normal that has been accelerated by Covid dispersion of content across platforms, exacerbated by the stay-at-home restrictions. What has transpired is a resurgence of linear growth over the past year. Linear TV is still the dominant media form, accessed by 67% of the population through pay or cable TV sources. So it is still dominant, but it is also declining with subscribers migrating to virtual TV services and cutting the cord.

According to Nutting, sports programming is driving cable, capturing a quarter of the dollars spent on the cable bill. The opportunity that sports can offer is the ability to get brand messaging outside of the commercial pod and into the programming proper. The challenge is to be able to capture granular data and have it ingested and integrated to form a single source. When you can access second by second ad data at the time when the sponsorship is on the screen, valuation can actually be achieved.

Zamaniyan explained that TiVo can capture second by second data when sponsorship is on screen using their proprietary set top box. Data from across the US can capture multiple sets within the homes, integrating a variety of MVPD sources. “MVPD can take TiVo data to integrate and bring valuation in a deterministic approach,” she noted.
Nutting added that it is possible to, “take logo detection, aggregate together and understand the value. Teams are putting content out there and brands are buying the sponsorships. They can take in all of the data sources and calculate the value of each source. It is eyes-on content.”

With the question of whether social drives broadcast, Zamaniyan offered the following example: Nickelodeon aired a special youth-hosted NFL broadcast which went viral. TIVO charted the audience flow with broadcast and social data laid over it which proved that social was driving people to linear viewership.

But the data needs to be analyzed granularly so that actual behavior can be accurately discerned. Zamaniyan cited an example from the Super Bowl. “It is the most expensive and most watched event,” she noted. In this case, there was a significant drop leading into the half time show this year. “We wanted to see what going on at the peak time of viewership and understand the omnichannel presence in the event.” What she saw was that during the break, some ad spots performed much better than others. There were significant peaks and valleys in viewership within the ad pod.

Case Study: Reaching the Diverse Consumer
Erica Jacobs, Associate. Director of Multicultural Marketing, The Clorox Company joined Marissa Nance, Founder, Native Tongue Communications in a ten-minute super-session regarding efforts to reach an increasingly diverse consumer base through authenticity, empathy and the right media mix.

Using the legacy and audience profile of Pine-Sol, Jacobs and Nance explained the value of respecting your target demographic and reaching that consumer group in an authentic manner. “It is an interesting time in terms of brand in the industry,” Jacobs explained. She partnered with Nance and her multi-cultural agency to further strengthen Pine-Sol’s market position among Black women.

“We knew we didn’t need to build a diverse audience because we already had it,” Jacobs noted. “We knew that we had gone through some turmoil on the brand. We weren’t connecting with the audience in our authenticity. Knowing our target is the Black female consumer hasn’t changed and we know the value of a bottle of Pine-Sol. We needed to let audience know that we hear you, we are there for you, we understand what legacy means to you and we see you.”

Nance advocated for a, “Native tongue relationship. In the decades I worked for Clorox, internally people have a seat at the table. The decisionmakers there understood the depths we needed to go to connect. So kudos to Clorox.” Ultimately, as Jacobs said, one needs to, “Understand the combination of the heart and head. It is not just pure sales.”

Targeting Niche Audiences
Moderator, Bill Daddi, Owner, Daddibrands Communications, polled Sam Garfield, VP Data Intelligence, AARP Services, Betsy Rella, VP Research and Data, NYI, Marianne Vita, SVP, Director of Integrated Strategy & Marketing, VAB on how to best target and deliver to niche audiences from both a marketer and programmer perspective. “This is a big topic about tiny audiences,” began Daddi.

What are niche audiences? Rella defined it as, “a segment within a segment, or a smaller, narrower group of consumers that advertisers are trying to reach through their campaign such as behavior, lifestyle, being a CEO, moms with school age children, etc.”

Vita added, “It can be groups that are not being marketed to like older adults. We’ve done lot of work and insights pieces on the fundamental disconnect. Half of the US population is over the age of 50. It underscores the need for us to shift from traditional buying on age and gender. It needs to be based on lifestyle and purchase behavior.”

Garfield concurred. “Fifty plus is definitely an undervalued audience. Given the increase in expected life expectancy, there is a benefit to look for audiences that are engaged. Niche audiences are engaged and can be reached through new mechanisms.”

“Do your homework internally and see who you need to target, who is purchasing now and who you are working with,” advised Rella. “Follow the evolution of your brand. Who is that elusive group you need to target? Do you have first party data? If not, okay, you can use third party data. Help clients determine who they are looking for and how they can identify one or more segments. It can be a small group and might need to be pieced together to make it a large enough group.”

In terms of scale and reach for niche audiences, Garfield explained that it is important to stay current with trends in data world because elements are changing especially in privacy and the retirement of the third party cookie as well as other changes forwarded by Apple. “There is an opportunity for first party data owners to collaborate,” he noted, and the need for the industry to collaborate. “We are seeing it at agencies, retailers and travel partners and we will see more and more of that. Each first party data owner has their own target audiences.”

Measuring Audiences With Music Television: Q&A With Vevo's Adam Butler
Adam Butler, Director, Brand Insights and Measurement, Vevo sat down with Cynopsis’ Lynn Leahey to discuss how his company successfully curates music videos to better connect with consumers while offering rich data to help inform marketers to make the best strategic decisions.

Vevo has a full library of music videos and they are packaging and programming those videos across a range of platforms, each attracting a range of audiences and desirable consumer groups. “We have seen change over last 10 years,” stated Butler, “We are a leading music video network with unique content. We are able to build audience reach and scale and are currently at 1 billion reach globally over the average month. So we can build audience at scale and distribute on multiple platforms from YouTube to connected TV, Samsung, Amazon Fire, Roku, etc. as a complement to TV ratings. We attract a younger, harder to find audience.”

At Vevo there is great interest in panels and context. Interestingly, they are device agnostic. “The myriad of services means that we get data from many places,” explained Butler. In addition to partnering with TVSquared, they also work with iSpot to quantify incremental audiences that advertisers can’t reach otherwise.

Next step moving down the funnel is to deliver brand lift via CTV. “We are finally looking at ways to measure lower funnel outcome. Getting it right is important. People don’t tend to click through on connected TV screens. We now have more data than we ever had and we look at the data to be sure it delivers actionable insights,” Butler said.

Vevo has a wide distribution footprint offering benefits in delivering across platforms and devices. “We are a one stop shop,” he explained. “IP is the new primetime and our content is definitely that. Our sweet spot is 18-34 and 18-49 with an average age of 30. We can also reach older viewers even if it is not our core audience.”

With advertiser partnerships, Vevo tracks weekly hits and algorithmically curated suggestions. Cultural moments, like an artist suddenly in the news or a sporting event, enables Vevo to take those videos and package them and have an advertiser surround them. “We are always cognizant of what our audience wants and that includes a growing multicultural population,” he said. “I don’t think desire for program content will go away.”

Audio’s Great Ascent
Grammy Award winner and Author, Tim Brooks, hosted a panel dedicated about audio with panelists Susan Larkin, COO, Audacy, Dennis Canlik, SVP Media Planning (Essence NBCU), GroupM and Landyn Saputo, Account Executive, Bloomberg Media.

“Podcasts are a booming field,” began Brooks. “It is closing in on $1 billion of ad spend per year without the kind of audience measurement you would usually require. Is this changing?”

“I definitely see this changing,” volunteered Saputo. “I am interested to see which platform leads the charge first. Now we can report on listener count, uniques and impressions by ad spot. Lots of advertisers are focused on the quality of the content. Bloomberg specifically has a good idea of our audience on other platforms but we need to create cross platform. We use listener surveys, content repurposed from radio,” she added.

Larkin explained, “Downloads used to be the primary measurement. Now we have psychographics. Apple and Spotify also provide levels of listening and usage. Downloads are antiquated currency.”

Canlik, being a creator of podcasts asked, “How can we best promote? What works for me in promotion is email marketing, letting people know when podcast is available, paid ads, promoting my page and word of mouth in my network post and re-post. I just published an episode on the 40th anniversary of Raiders of Lost Ark and am seeing amazing engagement because of the topic.”

Brooks asked what the single biggest near term change in podcasting is. Saputo said, “More actionable insights and pixel targeting for personalization.” For Larkin, it was “Better and more accurate forecast across audience segments.” Canlik said, “When we are aligned and can follow the thread. If marketers see results of the money they are providing, they will support it.”

Unlocking the Potential of CTV/OTT with Kochava Measurement & Data Solutions
Trevor Hamilton, VP Sales at Kochava offered participants his perspective on the potential of CTV/OTT to spur consumer action. He demonstrated that challenges of both measurement and privacy can be overcome with Kochava Foundry, which ascertains incremental lift via forensic control. Forensic control compares the behavior of two consumer groups – a test group that is exposed to the ad and a control group that is not – to see the difference in incremental lift using OTT. Hamilton showcased an example of a QSR campaign which resulted in 4,800 incremental purchases using OTT.

Ten year old Kochava is operates in the area of omnichannel measurement and data. “Marketer are facing unprecedented challenges, a host of hurdles,” explained Hamilton. “The pandemic accelerated cord cutting. Technologically IOS 14.5 and the framework have to opt in for tracking and measurement. Then add in compliance of data security and privacy,” and you have a landscape in flux and growing in influence. The OTT ad spend is expected to be $14.6 billion in 2023. Currently on average there are four streaming services per US household. OTT advertising platforms, which are a whole spectrum of devices, showcase the benefits of advertising on OTT because it is affordable, targetable, measurable and adaptable.

It is possible to optimize and adapt on the fly using data and technology on the backend. Measurement can measure all points with potential conversion from media creative, registrations, logins, content views, average viewing time, sessions, watch list etc. It is possible to holistically measure across touchpoints. Further, publishers have direct control across their own ad inventory. It is possible to get one set of tracking URLs for all campaigns and all advertisers, now offered on Roku and Vizio, as well as incremental lift measurement for app installs and web conversions, which deliver actionable results. Finally, Kochava has the solution with media lift forensic control groups which run against 100% of the audience to produce a more accurate form of incremental lift.

Using a Standard Unit of Measure to Pave the Way to Convergence
Continuing the discussion of cross-media measurement and attribution, Mark Gorman, CEO, Matrix, Susie Meehan, VP, Advanced Advertising Operations, AMC Networks and Kevin Stuart, VP Research, Hearst discussed the importance of a single unified metric for measurement, such as impressions, across platforms.

Gorman launched the discussion by asking, “How will TV be sold over the next three years considering the obstacles on the ad buy? Will there be a move to more impressions based?”

“There is a challenge in making it a reality. We made the push to impressions on local linear side for sales,” said Stuart. “But we ran into challenges. Agencies were ready to go and had systems in place dealing with impressions. Thirty five local direct clients said we always worked with impressions. Local and regional agencies aligned their buying planning systems to make transfer from ratings to impressions. But some came to us and said - we are ready to go to impressions but our clients aren’t ready. So we continue to work with our advertisers to make this a reality.”

“Here at AMC, we are focused on addressable everywhere,” said Meehan. “We are going through major migrations in the system now. We are laying the pipes to get to that measurement using Freewheel and we have our DMP and our identity partner. We have different attribution partners like 605.” She noted the importance of having the right identity graph partner. “We are looking for the right partners. We have a lot of work to do and want partners to lean in and not cost a fortune.”

“It is exciting to finally see linear and digital come together,” offered Meehan. “Linear addressable is complicated and delicate. We need to find right watermarking partner.”

Pride 2021+ What Comes Next?
June is Pride Month and what better way to celebrate than to host a panel on the GLBTQIA+ community? Moderator Merryn Johns, Editor and Chief, Queer Forty, queried panelists Kevin Milian, Associate Director, Consumer Research Solutions, Dentsu International and Horst Stipp, EVP Research and Innovation, The ARF on the best approaches that marketers and programmers can take to connect with this important and increasingly expanding (and at the same time fragmenting) consumer group.

Johns began with an overview of the GLBTQ+ landscape. “There is a lot going on in civil rights and cultural visibility especially in June. The definition of terms is a challenge with LGTB youth. The question is, how to be an ally without rainbow capitalism and pink washing? We have work to do. There are a bunch of big corporations such as P&G and GM and Glaxo who advertise on Fox News while at the same time advertise to GLBT n Pride Month.” How does that work?

“The umbrella is so wide and expansive,” noted Milian. “Nuance is important to the community coming of age versus elder. It is important to understand nuance between panels. We are a widespread community.”

As far as data of the community is concerned, the data is fragmented and siloed, according to Milian. “Some is in syndicated research sources. But the industry hasn’t done a good job of measuring over the decades. It is important for marketers to put pressure on syndicated sources. And commissioning custom research at agencies is even better.”

Advertisers who want diversity can make mistakes reacting to 200 social media posts and thinking that is what the public at large thinks. “You need to educate yourself and do good research to really find out what target group is expecting thinking and create creative that speaks to them,” suggested Stipp.

Milian added that it is, “Important to target and figure out people. Look at the data better. Talk to the right people and the right people in the room.”

Q&A | The State of Streaming Advertising
Moderator Lynn Leahey, along with panelists Christopher Murphy, Head of Partnerships, Advanced Advertising, Conviva and Josh Sharma, VP, Ad Partnerships, Entertainment Studios discussed the results of Conviva’s recent State of Streaming Advertising research study.

According to Sharma, “Sixty percent of viewers agree there are too many streaming ads being repeated or redundant which is the reason why there is a disjointed ad experience. There is fragmentation on publishers. You need to make sure you have a unified way of making a plan.”

Murphy added, “There is more convergence, but it is hard to decipher. There is now scarcity in linear and publishers can charge price premiums.” He noted that linear and digital are moving into consolidating into one category – video – to bring the media world together. Then we can unlock different datasets.

In terms of the amount of data available, Murphy noted the fragmentation you see in the supply side. “When you hear that there is not enough data, it depends on the company. Different data is available for transactions.” And all have their value proposition, according to Sharma.

Asked about the fact only 10% buyers reported being interested in brand safety, Murphy responded that linear is a lot more transparent, while digital tries not to share too much. Buyers are not satisfied with the level of transparency but are buying more CTV than ever before. There is more data available than linear. He believes that smaller publishers will move faster towards more transparency.

Sharma indicated that his company is going into market wanting to be transparent partner. “We are in negotiations with content partners and we let them know how important it is to us. We want to be a trusted partner with you. There is an education process in negotiation process.”

The most important factors going forward are, for Sharma, “Scale and data. Get smart about our audiences in a privacy compliant way and deliver relevant ads at scale.” For Murphy, it is “Trust and transparency. The CTV supply chain is messy. First party data wins. Too often there is a black box component on the buy side resulting in friction.” He advocated for more clean rooms and shared data assets to get people moving fast and better.”

A Kaleidoscope for Cross-Platform Measurement
Focusing further on cross-platform measurement, DISQO’s VP Product Marketing, Anne Hunter, discussed her company’s latest insights on consumer cross-platform usage, the state of the landscape and avoiding the pitfalls of data gaps in ad exposure measurement. Her company has a platform called Kaleidoscope, which is used for cross platform measurement tracking the impact of ad effectiveness when campaigns run cross platform.

Consumers are leading the way in terms of generating the data needed to optimize, resulting in intense measurement complexity, said Hunter, adding that that 62% of people are using multiple social media platforms each month. “Consumers are sampling creating their own media buffet,” she noted. “If you look at just social, there is a high degree of overlap.”

There is a need to make sense of all of this usage and overlap and DISQO has the solution in Kaleidoscope, enabling advertisers to understand consumer usage across all platforms. Hunter outlined a recent study her company conducted across social media platforms looking at usage, overlap and specific utilization.

What they found was that today, “Ad effectiveness measurement is mainly siloed. But it is actually not happening among consumers. For example, only 21% of LinkedIn users are using TikTok, but looking at TikTok, only 14% are using LinkedIn. Every single audience has a unique kaleidoscope of platform usage. It is important to understand how they consume and digest advertising on each platform to give you a view of what is effective.”

A Look Towards a Cookieless Future
The much heralded and much maligned cookie is fading into retirement. What measurement challenges will result from its demise? And what can we do about it? Moderator Anna Murray, CEO tmg-emedia polled Hui Weng, VP/Director Data Sciences at Publicis Media and Greg Stuart, CEO, MMA Global to get both the data and the sales impact of a cookieless future.

Murray started the conversation by asking, “What does a cookieless future mean?”
Weng began with a clearer definition of the cookie. “Let’s clarify. It is not just any cookie,” she explained, “it is about a third party cookie that is physically used on the browser for us to target, do frequency capping and measure a campaign result.”

In addition, she added, “Mobile is not just a cookie. It is really an aspect of mobile device ID tracking. It has also become challenging. With the mobile app, 90% of mobile users need to give consent to be able to track. Maybe 20% give consent but down the line they hope that number will continue to grow. This is where we are now. On the browser side we have about 40% currently cookieless right now making it very difficult to track on the user level on the browser. Next year, some time, either Q2 or Q1, we don’t know, Google, on their chrome browser, which is 60% share now, we won’t be able to track or target the way we are doing now.”

So while cookies are not terrific to begin with, the future, according to Murray looks to be, “Increasingly in lockdown.”

According to Stuart, “Cookies suck. They always have. We had an over reliance on them,” he asserted. “So many people deleted cookies. I think cookies had a shelf life of every 30 days they were replaced themselves. But it was the only tool we had and was the lowest common denominator. It’s not about the cookie, it’s not even really about IDFA. It’s about the underlying identifiers and how we can keep track of people’s behaviors broadly and can we get consumers to accept that. Identifiers is where it all comes together. It is what we don’t understand about advertising technology combined with what we don’t know about privacy policies. There is no real solution at hand and it may be a mess for a while and there may not be answers for a while.”

Weng noted that there are some solutions here. We need to identity, from the consumer perspective, how to resolve the tensions with privacy and with the need for personalization. But Stuart countered that he is not sure that consumers really want privacy. “Consumers never really cared. There is a really small minority of consumers who are really bent out of shape about privacy. At the end of the day, we have to respect that and operate on that level. What is happening is that regulators have made it a big topic and we are now leaning in aggressively. And then we have Apple who thinks it is their decision to determine my privacy for me. Why is their job to protect something I didn’t ask them to do? We definitely have an issue.”

Weng noted that while we share concerns, it is an exciting time to work in the space. “To address the one-to-many you need to scale your first party strategies. You need to change the mindset about how you collect first party data. Less transaction and more about the customer relationship.”

The main point is that we can’t do things like the way we always do. “Shame on us that we have gotten to that point,” said Stuart. For Weng, she is optimistic because there are lots of conversations going on amid the uncertainty. “Eventually we will get there,” she stated, “We need to educate the client.”