Is There a Future for Media Measurement Currency? The Industry Weighs In.

The issue of cross media measurement currency (and by currency I mean a standard metric that can be used as a comparison point between companies and platforms) has been a hotly debated discussion for a while. Now, with the ever expanding access of various data points and the de-accreditation of Nielsen’s local and national TV measurement services, the pressure to come to terms with the state of measurement has never been more pronounced.

In surveying the industry, there are many differing opinions on the future of measurement currency and what it should be. Many agree that some generally accepted metrics and methodology is table stakes. Yet, even beyond that general opinion, there are many divergent views.

When I posed this issue to Research Wonks, a forum for people who work in media and advertising research, analytics and data science, the response was immediate, well considered and over whelming.

Media Currency Agreement - Optimists versus Pessimists

“Currency removes friction in the market … until it’s at odds with what the market needs to function smoothly,” explained Stephen DeMarco, Head of Business Development at Tubular Labs. “Adults 35 and younger spend more time watching social video content than they do linear TV.”

For Aaron Fetters, Head of Client Development at Truthset, the ability to craft a currency in the current media ecosystem is close to impossible. “There is no solution for true cross-platform measurement,” he admitted. “Fifty years ago, the idea that it makes more sense for one independent, neutral party to count and define audiences was understandable. There was one dominant form of media at the time, television. It was not so difficult to apply a single methodology and process to the collection and interpretation of data across all major media owners.”  Now, with media fragmentation across platforms and devices, “the effort to produce numbers which somewhat realistically report the total unique reach (and frequency of exposure) of either an ad campaign or a piece of content and they all come up short for a variety of reasons, largely out of the control of the measurement providers,” he noted.

Arguably the most pessimistic is Chris Squire, SVP Head of Data, Samba. “The outdated, legacy currency measurement barely scratches the surface of advertiser needs via proxy metrics that fall short of measuring the business outcomes that are instrumental to campaign ROI. As the industry approaches a critical inflection point to rethink how advertisers transact with each other, we are excited at the prospect of multiple currencies based on these business outcomes for true ROI insight.”

Media Currency Solutions – Considerations

The ever increasing opportunities to push content across platforms can lead to new and highly creative measurement adaptations while at the same time, pose further challenges.

 “There's a massive move from counting delivery in the form of GRPs to measuring outcomes, whether that's advertising's ability to grow brands, drive engagement or sales,” explained Anne Hunter, VP, Product Marketing, DISQO, because of fragmentation, speed of consumer change and direct to consumer as well as one-to-one marketing efforts.

For Senior Insights Consultant, Laura Chaibi, the ability to form closed loop selling can make the discussion of a currency irrelevant. “In other parts of the world, it is almost problematic when the publisher is also the bank in places like China. They see how much money you have, how you spend it and what you can afford. This is the ultimate closed loops selling – do you need a currency in this market?” she posited and added, “Amazon seem closer to full end to end closed loop selling more than any other platform / publisher (if you can call them that) in the USA that is selling media.”

Setting priorities in measurement solution is the view of Daniel Slotwiner, VP, Measurement, Insights and PMM, Gopuff. He would like to, “See more of a discussion about explicitly measuring ads versus content. I think both need to be measured, for sure, but for trading purposes I think it's time we leave content aside and focus on measuring ads (with some meta data about the context in which/on which they are viewed).”  

Conclusion

In my opinion, some form of standard, generally accepted baseline metric is important for comparison purposes across properties, but just like any wildly divergent industry of competing self -interests, to get all interested parties in agreement is probably a pipe dream. Should we keep the traditional status quo of Nielsen, despite its limitations? Do we migrate to a Comscore with its own set of limitations? Or do we venture into new parameters with another company, TBD? Perhaps a consortium of industry organizations can form a special committee to address measurement standards to either strengthen the current or form a new standard protocol.

For Jane Clarke, Managing Director, CIMM, “There doesn’t have to be one solution for a new currency, because different marketers have different needs and will use different datasets.  We just need common standards to verify ad exposures across media.  Those who provide ad exposure data need to be willing to have that data audited and accredited.” 

As a closing but important added consideration, Ben Tatta, President of Standard Media Index concluded, “It wasn't long ago when there was no debate regarding the currency or any viable alternative for measuring TV.  I suggest that we bifurcate, "measurement" from "currency."   Even if it takes time to transition to a more unified impressions-based currency that doesn't mean we can't change the basis by which we measure performance and outcomes.”        

Let the conversation continue….

This article first appeared in the Hocus Focus Newletter.

 

 

Getting Ready for the Upfronts with the PeopleFront

This year’s PeopleFront focused on three main pillars of the media marketplace – people, outcomes and ROI – and offered discussion viewpoints from “the street”, the research, the data and the buyers and sellers.

Dave Morgan, CEO and founder of Simulmedia and the host of the PeopleFront, presented the big picture when he said, “There is a consensus that the next year or two will bring significant change.  TV is continuing to make money and is expected to make money for some time. There are steps that TV companies can do to extend the duration and profitability.” 

Here are the different views on possible solutions:

View from the Street

Change, consumer behavior evolution and the limitations of the measurement in a world of ever increasing pools of data cause a confluence of challenges. “The nature of what is TV is fluid,” noted Brian Weiser, Senior Analyst, Pivotal, “Younger demos change behavior more rapidly. Some behavior is not currently measured that would make consumption data more healthy.” He explained that there was a recent CRE insights study that showed that TV is ambient in a world of multi-tasking. “There is still an important role for TV,” he assured, “but it is changing” depending on the degree of programming engagement.

On the ad side of the equation, Anthony DiClemente, Managing Director, Nomera, said, “The U.S. ad growth is robust and we have upped our forecast. TV is showing unexpected resilience.” That is this season. The projection may change in two or three years as Anthony admitted, “Automation of TV ad selling is causing concern.”

Affiliate fees are an area of current concern, however. There are persistent concerns regarding cord cutting and shaving and the further consolidation in the distribution space. “We are shifting to larger and more scaled companies,’ said Anthony, “What is media doing with their cash? Are they investing organically? Are they automating? Or are they buying stock back? We applaud companies organically and investing in the right way such as in infrastructure, programming etc.”

What the Research Says
The ARF recently completed an ambitious series of studies to measure how advertising works. "We collected 40 industry leaders together, committed $1million investment on three studies over 5000 campaigns, twelve years of data, $375B in advertising spend in 41 countries across over 100 categories  in the areas of Cross platform ROI, improve creative and mobile mastery," explained ARF CEO Gayle Fuguitt. The insights were that advertisers need to invest across platforms, combine traditional and digital media, optimize digital by capping frequency and unify their creative while keeping in mind the unique characteristics of each platform to optimize performance.

“Targeting purchasers by direct match at scale increases ROI,” explained Bill Harvey, Co-Founder and Strategic Advisor, TiVo Research. “TiVo Research proved it with multiple advertisers. Now Simulmedia is proving it by running 72 campaigns for advertisers in 2015 using the same methods and showing ROI improvements in the same range as TiVo i.e. up to +250%. Simulmedia is also reducing waste frequency and is targeting day of week for recency. An example of a campaign where the same brand’s other TV had half the impressions in the excessive frequency range, the Simulmedia campaign had fewer than 5% in that bucket,” he concluded.

Daniel Slotwiner, Director Advertising Research at Facebook, recently conducted a study with Neuro-Insight on the coordination of TV advertising with digital to get the best impact. “We measured memorability, brand linkage, likability linkage and found the most efficient way to drive awareness.”

Connecting the Dots with Data

There is more data available than ever before and research companies are actively engaged in creating tools to maximize the value of this data. But there are challenges. In the case of Nielsen, Steve Hasker, President and COO explained that, “We have been working with STB data for 7 years, matching it up with credit card data and working on an independent currency measurement using the panel with large databases.” But it has not been easy. “We are chipping away to get access to STB data,” he added, “Most of today's STB data owners can't supply STB data over night.”

Omar Tawakoi, SVP, GM Oracle Data Cloud, said, “We are running a data cloud. Having a census approach is very important. In digital everything is census based and things are starting to get really interesting in TV. We are connecting offline sales to digital activities and want to prove that TV ads drive sales offline.”

“My clients only care if we moved the needle,” said Wes Nichols, Co-Founder, Marketshare, SVP Chief Strategy Officer. “They really don't care about measurement or the brilliance of a campaign etc. There is a huge credibility gap between marketing and the C-suite. We are cobbling together data based measurement and need to get a fuller assessment of our investment.”

Buyers and Sellers of the Eve of the Upfront

What about content providers and buyers? From the sellers side, Arlene Manos, President national Ad Sales, AMC, said, “Data has begun to figure into our discussion. But as a single company, we can’t effect change alone. We are using data to change internally and to figure out how to get viewers acquainted with our diverse programming.”

On the buyers side, Yin Woon Rani, VP, U.S. Marketing at Campbell’s, noted that, “Traditional advertisers take a TV centric viewpoint.  But digital is changing the nature of expectations. It is not that easy to compare between mediums so the real task for marketers is deciding where dollars can go across the media pool.”

But, there has been “an evolution over several years. We are getting more find tuned beyond demographics,” according to M’lou Walker, CEO, Matrixx. Because Matrixx in is the consumer healthcare industry, M’lou said that “Knowing when our consumers are sick is more important for us. We need to find who she is at that moment of illness. So we take segmentation data and find consumers at different points and roll it all up.  TV plus digital gets us much further. We can get to consumer in her moment.”

As Dave concluded, the industry is now “More evolutionary than revolutionary but the evolutionary pace is picking up. We are swimming in data. How to can we best operationalize it?” That will remain the burning question as we are about to enter the next upfront.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBlogger.com

Yes, Creative and Data Can Be Friends, According to PSFK

Something strange happened at the recent PeopleFront and the PSFK conferences. The PeopleFront, based on the importance of data driven solutions, led to a discussion of the importance of the creative. PSFK, based on the importance of creative ideas, devoted the afternoon to big data, artificial intelligence, IBM’s Watson, cognitive computing and analytical insights. Hey, what gives here? 


At the Peoplefront, Facebooks Director of Ads Research, Daniel Slotwiner noted that "we are all working on data strategy; Data for insights, data for outcomes. But creative is one of the most important things. We can get the right eyeballs in right time and right format but what if it is bad content?"

At PSFK, the discussion of data was intertwined with the creativity of invention. Steven Dean, author of the book, Quantified Self noted that “most individuals don't know what big data means. But if it helps to build the right products it is providing value to consumer.” Tara Greer, EVP/Executive Creative Director, platforms at DEUTSCH LA added that we are “living in big data environment; the Internet of things involving body, health, in home, in vehicles. (For example there are) smart chopsticks to see if you are eating reused oil.” 

How much is data impacting the creative process? For some at the PSFK conference, it helps in curating content. According to Cloth’s co-founder Seth Porges, “Big data is important when assessing different content. It can help curate content for you.” For others it is a gut check. Dean says that he “thinks about the data, but I opt for experiences that are narrative and storytelling - Not numbers. I must make meaning out of the data that is there.”

In the world of gaming, the subtle use of behavior modifiers, including the use of a certain color, is tested. Jamin Warren, founder of Kill Screen, explained the phenomena of GamerGate and the misogyny in the gaming world. “There are flaws in how we communicate online. (We have experimented with) changing color of text to see if it impacts behavior.”

But when does data cross over the line? How much is too much? Greer explained that there is a “gap between big data and big wisdom. Measurement used to be an epiphany but there are challenges to move beyond the data to create meaningful experiences.” Porges added, “You run the risk of losing taste when you apply too much data. (You) need a chance to experiment outside the data.”

There is a “big moral question” according to Greer regarding data privacy. “More people are cognizant today but years ago big data was utopian. Now there is a big rebellion against big data.” But Dean admitted that “there are some aspects of my life that I would like to leave up to an algorithm, like what should I eat, for example.” In a perfect, more on-demand world, data could be used as a benevolent influencer. Tegan Faan, founder at Gigit said, “Data in an algorithm can give me simplicity. It can make my life simpler and match people to their unique interests. Personalization.”

In my experience, creative and quant have had a love/ hate relationship. Research could be held up by creators as a vindication of their gut instincts or a report card of their lacking performance. But I have always felt that the two disciplines are intertwined.  If data is the messenger, it is the content that forms the message. Without either you just have meaningless noise.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com