Nationalizing STB Data Driven Sales – The Cablevision and Fourthwall Partnership

With all of the data initiatives out there, I am personally drawn to Cablevision’s whose STB data represents the largest and most diverse DMA in the country.  Currently weighing in at 2.6 million homes and 7.2 million STBs, it covers linear, live and VOD tuning. So it was with great interest that I sat down with Paul Haddad, SVP and GM, Advanced Data Analytics, Cablevision Media Sales and Bill Feininger, President, Fourthwall, to discuss their recent partnership and how Cablevision data insights could be incorporated into a more national footprint.

Cablevision has developed two types of portfolios using data. The first is for the advertising arm of Cablevision Media Sales to help sell audience for impressions based campaigns. The other is, according to Paul, “a standalone system for programmers who do business with Cablevision. This portfolio helps them with analytics services which include in-depth program analysis by specific segments, advanced research of the effectiveness and the health of their programming and campaigns they ran locally or nationally, and audience reach and frequency by relevant segments.” In the past this analysis would be solely in the Cablevision coverage area but now with the addition of Fourthwall data, it enables analysis beyond the footprint.

I was curious as to why Cablevision would choose Fourthwall as a partner. Paul explained, “We did an evaluation of different datasets and were seeking an unbiased party that was pure in its offering. Other datasets, such as those from other MVPDs and SmartTVs were biased, in our opinion, because they were from only one source. We too are considered a biased source being an MVPD. We wanted purity and neutrality of the data collection and quality and there was only one – Fourthwall – where we liked the representativeness of the Fourthwall markets given that it aligns well with where we want to go. We wanted markets across the country to analyze and understand the nuances of Television viewership across these markets. We also wanted Live and DVR data combined given that a lot of valuable insights can be provided by analyzing and understanding the shift of audiences between these two mediums. Other datasets have either Live and VOD, but not DVR.” 

The key applications for this partnership are:

          Audience Based Media Planning for brands or programmers with national media plans based on audiences with expanded attributes beyond age and gender. It is possible to create segmentations and receive plans that they can then execute. 

   Programming Conversion Analysis looking at the relationship between live and DVR viewing, reach and frequency, household that might have viewed last year versus this year and the conversion of the targeted audience after the campaign.

           Audience Analysis looking at loyal viewers and how their viewing has evolved in the current season. Did they move from linear to DVR, for example, and the programs audience analytics. 

                 National Advertising Analytics where campaigns are run with the use of extended datasets to measure conversion to specific audiences reached. 

From Fourthwall’s perspective, Bill explained that, “FourthWall Media serves the industry as a data provider and also provides the keys to link 1st and 3rd party data.  These patent-pending techniques allow our clients to go from traditional age/gender targeting to purchase behaviors, loyalty card members’ viewership, etc.  The intent is to be able to find very specific audience segments.  Our dataset and matching services make this happen.”

It is my personal hope that the industry moves from silo’ed proprietary data solutions to something that can be syndicate-able and delivers powerful insights and analytics. Paul agreed and said, “We are focused on building an open and advanced analytics platform using first party and census-level MVPD data to help evolve the legacy TV measurement methodologies. Such an offering is desperately needed by programmers and advertisers today so they can understand the dynamics that are impacting their marketing, programming, and ad sales initiatives, and to make better decisions that can help them compete with the analytics-savvy competitors. Our goal is to also help evolve the research function - that currently uses sample or hybrid data models - to a powerful analytics function using census level data sets and advance analytics platforms. By joining with Fourthwall, we are implementing our plan to do this at scale and we support bringing more companies into our model as we find additional quality data sets.”

I am personally optimistic.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

What Are Data Companies Contributing to the Television Market? An Overview of Offerings – Part 6

This is the sixth and concluding article in a series on the range of television measurement data solutions being offered by data companies in the industry. In Parts One through Five, participating companies answered a range of questions on their data from their business model to attributes to challenges in the industry. In Part Six we look at the future potential of the data with the goal of a standardize-able industry standard. Is this possible in the short term or are we mired in competitive differences that will push any industry solution out into the long term?

My Take: I believe there is a great interest in developing a standardize-able metric or series of metrics for cross platform measurement. But the challenge will be in deciding exactly which metric that will be. Some say delivery might be the best connector. Others have offered reach and frequency. But one thing is clear to me - Until we can agree on the one metric that will tie all measureable platforms together, it will all be just branding and market positioning which only adds to the continued fragmentation in the space.

Question 6: What do you see as the future potential for your data to be used in creating a standardize-able measurement for the industry?

Joan FitzGerald Senior Vice President, Television and Cross Media Service, comScore: comScore provides objective, third-party measurement across platforms – wherever and whenever content or advertising is consumed. What’s important is that buyers and sellers agree up front to the metrics used to transact and those metrics must come from a neutral, consistent and reliable source. Xmedia provides the industry with the flexibility they want and need to plan and evaluate audiences across all screens.

Kelly Abcarian, Senior Vice President, Watch Product Architecture, Nielsen: Nielsen has always and will always provide a standardized, 3^rd party independent measurement that allows the marketplace to transact in a productive and orderly way. The main piece missing today from the future of Total Audience measurement is industry consensus about what metrics will be used to trade in a world that combines unit based and impressions based ad campaigns. Years ago, when the industry collectively agreed upon C3/C7, they didn’t envision the rapid evolution of digital content and the impact on the business in terms of monetizing audiences. Our Nielsen heritage has been built on helping to establish that currency.  In order to continue to meet the needs of our clients, we are encouraging the entire industry to work together again to redefine currency around the evolving media universe.

Cathy Hetzel, Rentrak Corporate President: Rentrak is being used today as the STB-based currency in television. Everyday local stations, national networks, agencies and advertisers are using our ratings with advanced demographics to buy and sell advertising. We are integrated into agency buying systems, such as MediaOcean’s OX system, Strata and Imagine. We are driving many of the engines for programmatic buying and we will continue to work toward unduplicated reach for our cross platform offerings. We are the only massive and passive based television currency currently undergoing the process of MRC accreditation. We believe strongly that there will be a sample currency and a census currency in the marketplace for many years to come.

Leslie Wood, Nielsen Catalina Solutions: There are two places where I see that our work can be standardized. One is in the targeting realm. What we provide are buyer-graphic indexes. We apply those indexes to a Nielsen peoplemeter rating and are trying to find the likelihood a certain consumer will watch this program. That is our Buyergraphic Index which is fairly standardize-able. We’ve done a lot of work on the predictability of those numbers as it relates to demographics. On the other side is measurement and this is my core passion – measuring the core effects of advertising. The current quality of measuring the effects of advertising is very uneven, particularly in television. This is an area that the industry should put enormous effort into. We have put in enormous effort but there are key pieces where we need to know that what we are measuring is valid and there is a long way to go there.

Bill Feininger, President FourthWall Media: Set top box data is now common place in measurement systems.  This will not only increase in use, but be pressed into service for dataset matching and targeted advertising.  FourthWall Media already aggregates data from almost two dozen MSOs, as well as collects all the Charter Communications data, so in effect, we are already a de facto standard.

Charles Buchwalter, President and CEO Symphony Advanced Media: This is present potential for Symphony Advanced Media. Our VideoPulse product launched on September 1, and several companies are already using our data on a charter client basis as the primary source for tracking true cross media content and advertising exposure.

Eric Schmitt, Executive Vice President, Communications, TV and Media. Allant: The Allant Audience Interconnect® is software-and-data-as-a-service to which has been purpose-built to standardize and scale advanced TV and premium video advertising.   Campaign measurement is a key piece of the platform, and is uniquely powerful when coupled with support for custom audience segments and cross-platform industrywide execution. 

Frank Foster, SVP General Manager, TiVo Research and Analytics (TRA): For media to be deemed relevant, advertisers must have the insights that allow them to evaluate multiple platforms with the same metrics. To address that need, we’ve built what we believe is the largest cross-media single-source sample comprised of directly matched second-by-second tune-in data, online exposure, and purchase data from more than 2 million homes. Since our data is 100% matched, while still meeting strict privacy standards, we can measure how effectively advertising drives consumer behavior from exposure to purchase without the uncertainty that comes with modeling or fusion.

Mainak Mazumdar Chief Science Officer, Simulmedia: Simulmedia is not in the business of being a standardized currency or measurement platform. Our data is used by our platform to deliver audience-targeted TV advertising campaigns that drive an advertiser’s business outcomes, and deliver the strongest return on investment for an advertiser’s TV budgets that is available in the marketplace today.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

What Are Data Companies Contributing to the Television Market? An Overview of Offerings – Part 5

This is the fifth in a series of articles on the various data solutions for television measurement being offered by data companies in the industry. In Parts One through Four, participants answered questions regarding their data business model and on their data attributes. Now in Part Five we explore some of the challenges to the television data measurement business.

My Take: Entrenched attitudes are, in my opinion, the biggest hurdle to overcoming the shortcomings of television measurement. As long as we continue to forecast on current metrics, change will be slow and painful. Yet, the fragmentation of the television environment and the looming prospect of programmatic TV may push us to change faster, finding and agreeing to solutions to current challenges. The demands of the marketplace might be the engine of needed change sooner than later. 

Question 5: What are some of the challenges you see in the television measurement world today? How can these challenges be solved?

Bill Feininger, President FourthWall Media: Television audience measurement today is measured by panels that determine the total audience.  As the industry moves one-to-one marketing, small representatives are challenged to serve this changing world.  Measuring every household and eventually every individual is essential in providing marketers and advertisers that direct connection to consumers, so set top box measurement is a step along the way to providing the industry the breathe of data that is necessary.

Frank Foster, SVP General Manager, TiVo Research and Analytics (TRA): Sample size is the clearest change that needs to be made to make TV measurement more effective. The proliferation of both distribution channels and content means we have to reevaluate the way we count viewers. To compound basic measurement challenges, advertisers are demanding the audience targeting and outcome based metrics they’ve grown accustomed to in digital. The current sample sizes need to increase by two orders of magnitude to account for these new behaviors and give advertisers the behavioral and psychographic information they need. A bigger sample size necessitates single-source data on a massive scale for advertisers to determine cross-platform media mix and creative effectiveness. Linking data from these disparate sources will continue to be a challenge. 

Mainak Mazumdar Chief Science Officer,Simulmedia: Challenges: Small sample sizes trying to measure the increasingly fragmented TV viewing landscape.  Long-tail is not measured. OTT is excluded.  Standard TV media metrics (GRPs and target demos) do not correlate to ROI, the metric that marketers are really most interested in.  There is also a lack of innovation in incorporating census level data (e.g STB) with panels. Potential solution: While reach is important, measurement should focus on ROI and sales impact of TV ads – the metric that really drives a marketer’s business. Data is now making this possible in the world of TV. Expand measurement footprint by incorporating STB and OTT into standard measurement methods.

Charles Buchwalter, President and CEO Symphony Advanced Media: Today’s single biggest market issue is that the significant developments in viewing media beyond Live+7 are not being tracked by an objective, 3rd party firm. The Symphony Advanced Media VideoPulse offering not only tracks Live, DVR to 7 days, and VOD to 3 days for all programs/episodes in the US, but also tracks OTT, DVR beyond 7 days and VOD beyond 3 days.

Kelly Abcarian, Senior Vice President, Watch Product Architecture, Nielsen: Consumer choice is driving how content is viewed and it is fundamentally changing the business of TV, advertising and measurement. Rapid technological change has forever altered the way that content is distributed and consumed, creating new challenges for measuring audiences across new platforms and screens. It is quite clear that our clients are rethinking the way they access and use data. As they collect terabytes of information on their customers, they want a way to connect the dots between what they know about a customer (and potential) customer to what other companies know; and, they want a clear way to engage with each person in the right way and at the right time. Our Total Audience framework, represents the next step in the evolution of TV ratings by reporting the total audience – across digital and linear – for a TV program or ad campaign in a consistent and comparable way.  As has always been the case, the industry can choose how to transact business, based on the flexibility that comprehensive, Total Audience measurement allows. In addition to total “ratings” – audiences by age/gender – we are also enabling analytics across the thousands of audience segments that are available in the audience-based, programmatic ecosystem.  This is where our acquisition of eXelate enables us to tie together Nielsen’s media consumption data together with eXelate’s audience data (over 10,000 segments) to provide unparalleled consumer insights for an audience-based world.

Eric Schmitt, Executive Vice President, Communications, TV and Media. Allant: Advertisers are shifting dollars to more precise audience-based buying techniques, but measurement is lagging.  A principal challenge is the verification of de-duplicated segment-level campaign reach/frequency across media and platforms.  Related challenges include the need for more automated proposal and execution processes (shorter cycle times), the normalization of segment definitions across TV and online and an advertiser’s ability to scale advanced ad techniques across multiple ad sellers and inventory types.   The Audience Interconnect® solves these challenges by providing a system of record for audience segments (household level counts in seconds, not days), coupled to cross-media campaign execution (national and spot linear, addressable, VOD and online) , and standardized impressions measurement and projections on the back end.

Cathy Hetzel, Rentrak Corporate President: Rentrak is very excited about the business climate over the next several years. We see cross-platform measurement as the opportunity ahead. While today we are able to measure multiple platforms, we are working hard toward providing cross-platform intelligence including unduplicated reach and frequency using new data sources to connect the dots. Rentrak is at the center of these advanced advertising models and is the only company prepared to measure TV Everywhere at the required scale. We see international expansion as a key opportunity for growth. We believe the regulatory environment is favorable for creating jobs and supporting local content, and only with census-based measurement can long-tail networks exist profitably. We highly value consumer privacy and have developed privacy compliant methods to create targets from aggregated anonymous data that are needed to drive advertising models. The days of the not-for-profit Joint Industry Group (JIG) are over as MVPDs should earn revenue for contributing their data for industry.

Joan FitzGerald Senior Vice President, Television and Cross Media Service, comScore: The most pressing challenge in the television measurement world today is that television viewing has ‘escaped’ the television set and needs to be measured across all platforms – MVPD, DVR, SVOD and devices such as smartphones, tablets and OTT.  comScore recently introduced Xmedia, which is the industry’s first syndicated measurement of combined TV and digital audiences. We created Xmedia because our clients have told us that they need solutions now that will help them measure the complexities that come along with the ever-changing way that people are consuming content thanks to the digital world. With better data and technology, linear TV along with Total Video in all of its forms can be measured for the benefit of both buyers and sellers.

Leslie Wood, Nielsen Catalina Solutions: This is a question that someone at Nielsen should answer. They work on this all the time. Because I am focused on the effects of advertising, I don’t need a total audience number. The industry knows we are missing pieces. I am less concerned because I look at consumer groups for a product or a category. The world is changing incredibly quickly. There are new ways of consuming media. How do we define TV? If you see a program on the internet is it TV or is it digital? I leave that to others and take the benefit from what they have done.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

What Are Data Companies Contributing to the Television Market? Overview Part 3 - Clients

This is the third in a series of articles examining and comparing the various data solutions for television measurement being offered by data companies in the industry. Previous articles explored the range of data offerings used in television and the marketing efforts to integrate the data into television analytics. Now, in Part Three, we ask about clients. Who currently uses which of these data offerings?

My take: While there are many large companies contracting data services and implementing data strategies using the companies outlined below, it is essentially for individual, siloed efforts and not a more cooperative type of industry wide adoption at this time. The feedback I have received from the previous two articles in this series is that there is still too much confusion in the industry because of overlapping claims. By examining which clients use which service, we may begin to see which service is best used for each type of media.  Some solutions may work best for agencies, some more for networks and some work best as secondary, supportive tools for other data processors and vendors. Ideally, one or two solutions will emerge as standardize-able industry solutions. Time (and industry cooperation) will tell.

Question 3: What types of clients use your data? Please include specific clients if that is allowable under your agreement with them.

Mainak Mazumdar Chief Science Officer,Simulmedia: We do not license or sell our data as a standalone offering. Rather, our data is used internally by Simulmedia’s VAMOS platform to plan, optimize, and report on our delivered TV campaigns. To our clients, our offering is audience-targeted TV advertising campaigns that drive business outcomes.

Frank Foster, SVP General Manager, TiVo Research and Analytics (TRA): Our clients include leaders in CPG, pharmaceuticals, insurance, finance, and tech. We also work with DMPs, DSPs, SSPs, agencies, and broadcast/cable networks. *We respect our clients’ privacy, but many of the presentations we’ve done with clients are available from the ARF and elsewhere if you want to cite those. 

Bill Feininger, President FourthWall Media: We’ve announced several clients including: Simulmedia for programmatic television buying, Nielsen Catalina Solutions for ROI and targeted ad placement, Rentrak for television audience measurement, Starcom Mediavest for television audience attribution and AOL/Adap.tv for audience ad targeting, 

Charles Buchwalter, President and CEO Symphony Advanced Media: Our clients represent the largest advertisers (in particular, CPG, technology, mobile manufacturers), agencies across all of the major holding companies, and media companies (network and cable broadcasters, as well as the largest digital publishers).

Kelly Abcarian, Senior Vice President, Watch Product Architecture, Nielsen: Nielsen’s client base includes, but is not limited to: Advertisers, Agencies, Broadcast Networks, Cable Networks, Cable Representatives, Cable System Operators, Data Processors, Data Modelers, Government Agencies, Hispanic (Spanish Language) Networks, Hispanic Agencies, Industry Organizations, Internet Companies, Investment Researchers, Local Advertising Agencies, Local Stations, Local Station Representatives, Media Buyers, Placed-Based Networks, Press, Public Broadcasters, Publishers, Regional Cable Networks, Sports Leagues & Teams, Syndicators/Producers, Talent Agents, Universities/Colleges.

Eric Schmitt, Executive Vice President, Communications, TV and Media. Allant: Allant’s clients include the largest TV distributors, network programmers, broadcasters, agencies and advertisers.  The Audience Interconnect® will facilitate hundreds of campaigns totaling more than $200 million in 2015 TV media spend, and we expect robust growth in 2016.  The agencies and F1000 advertisers we support including leading brands in automotive, consumer packaged goods, financial services, telecom and the political category.   Comcast and Charter have been longtime anchor clients, and we support household addressable campaigns at other leading distributors including Dish and other MVPDs.  We have experience with a wide variety of set top box and viewership data, and designed and built the industry’s largest set top box data repository. 

Cathy Hetzel, Rentrak Corporate President: Our national linear television system has 110 national U.S. network clients including CBS, Fox, CW, A&E, Scripps, and Discovery. Rentrak’s clients also include over 160 agencies including each of the five major U.S. agency holding companies, including WPP, Publicis, Omnicom/MediaGroup, IPG, and Dentsu Aegis Network, as well as numerous advertisers. We are the established leader in the ad verticals of automobiles, political, and consumer packaged goods. On the Local side, Rentrak has clients from the biggest TV station groups – CBS, Fox, Tribune, Sinclair, Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Raycom Media, Bonten Media Group, and many others. Overall, more than 465 local U.S. TV stations from 70 station groups in 160 markets. Rentrak’s Video on Demand service has more than 226 U.S. clients and is the industry’s currency in STB Video on Demand audience measurement with 100% market share. We receive On Demand viewing data from more than 55 of the top multichannel video programming distributors, including Comcast, Charter, Cox, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and DIRECTV. We are also the recognized industry currency for addressable and interactive television.

Leslie Wood, Nielsen Catalina Solutions: We are currently focusing on two groups – direct to advertisers and digital providers, portals and publishers. They tend to be the people who pay for our data. We also sell to media companies and they use our data to create buys. An advertiser, if they buy their data, the agency automatically is included. 

Joan FitzGerald Senior Vice President, Television and Cross Media Service, comScore: comScore clients cross the spectrum of publishers, media brands, advertisers, advertising agencies as well as telecommunications and MVPDs and investment firms.  comScore clients include all major media brands – ESPN, Turner Broadcasting, A&E Networks, CBS, Fox, and NBC Universal to name a few – and all major advertising agency holding companies.  In addition, comScore advertiser clients cross the spectrum of verticals – CPG, financial services, retail, and more.