Fostering innovation in cross platform media measurement and
bringing more granular measurement to TV have been missions for CIMM since its
inception. Now, at the seventh annual Cross-Platform Media Measurement and Data
Summit held last week in New York, CIMM is proving that hard work and deep
analysis can result in industry change. Panelists from networks, agencies,
brands, associations and data companies exchanged ideas on how the advancements
in cross-platform measurement and data are impacting the industry ad model.
CIMM has created a
Measurement
Manifesto which serves as a roadmap to ensure a continued industry focus on
cross-platform measurement. As Jane Clarke, CEO and Managing Director of CIMM,
noted, “We need to keep the dialogue going about how to manage change by
following our roadmap to plan, measure exposure and evaluate. There is still
more work to do but we are making progress.”
Highlights of the seventh annual summit include:
The Erosion of the Advertising Market and Upending
of Business as Usual
According to
Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Growth Officer, Publicis Groupe, the advertising
industry is in for a rude awakening. He said that the increasing ad loads and
irrelevant messaging has been disrespectful to the consumers’ time. The result
is that they are increasingly spending more time in ad free environments. Because
of this trend, there will be “less and less advertising,” resulting in a 25% to
30% decline in ad inventory in the next five years as brands go direct to the
consumer.There will also be consolidation among media companies resulting in fewer networks and,therefore, less inventory.
There are
three Connected Ages, according to Tobaccowala. The first was the Link, the
second was the advent of Social Networks and Smartphones and the third is now
Connecting to Data with Artificial Intelligence. “Things are connecting to
things with the IoT,” he stated. “There will be new ways of connecting through
Voice, AR and VR which are coming to us much faster than anticipated and will
lead to different ways to measure,” he added. While we are in the business of
measuring impressions from programs or networks now, this will shift to
measuring interactions of people.
Going For Good Rather Than Perfect in
Attribution
Attribution
is emerging as a primary goal for advertisers and networks. But there are so
many aspects to attribution that achieving the perfect industry standard is a chimera.
“There is the lie of attribution,” noted Joe Marchese, President Advertising
Revenue, Fox Networks Group because “the human brain is more complicated. Brands
are bought with cultural relevance.” There is also, what Scott Hagedorn, CEO,
Hearts & Science, Omnicom Media Group, described as “negative attribution,”
where an ad placed next to objectionable content becomes tainted. And it is
important to give credit where credit is due. Brand value is accrued over the
long term according to Marchese, so “if we move to pure attribution, it is the platforms
that achieve all of the value.”
Overcoming Obstacles
Industry associations such as the ANA, 4As, ARF and MRC are
all focused on addressing a range of industry challenges including solving for
fraud, viewability, deduplication and data labeling for cross platform
measurement.
Bob Liodice, CEO, ANA, noted that his organization has made
progress in the fraud area and in eliminating waste. “We are learning how to
control fraud and rein in bots,” he stated. “It is increasingly complex but we
are all asking the same question - Do I have the information necessary to make
right decisions to grow business?” Scott McDonald, CEO and President, the ARF,
spoke of the Sunshine Rule advocating transparency in measuring exposures
through deduplication. “There is a gap between exposure and ROI sales lift and it
is not well understood,” he stated.
Cooperation Between Frenemies
“Fostering
competition is the only way to get innovation,” stated Clarke. This is true in
the area of measurement. Brain Hughes, SVP, Audience Intelligence and Strategy,
MAGNA, believes that competition between measurement companies “makes for better
thinking for problem solving and that is
not a bad thing.”
Yet there
are some companies that are finding that cooperating with their competitors can
bear fruit. OpenAP, a collaborative effort between Fox, Turner and Viacom is
one effort designed to measure attention and engagement. “We need to get better
thinking about how measurement correlates to outcomes. What viewability drives
outcome and then build back to measurement standards from there,” advised
Howard Shimmel, Chief Research Officer, Turner.
“Measurement
is now a team sport. Cooperation is needed,” concluded Elissa Lee, Director
Research, Advanced Technologies, Google.
What’s the state of the advertising industry? Ask Bob Liodice, CEO of the Association of National Advertisers
(ANA). He’s steering his organization through unparalleled change with a
call for greater marketplace transparency. He’s also changing the
business model by reappraising the agency and client relationship that
helps advertising keep pace with technical advancements.
