The 4As Examine Media Measurement Priorities at Advertising Week

There is strength in numbers. And I don’t just mean that in terms of all of the data being gathered and transacted upon in our industry today. I also mean it to suggest that we need to work together - from networks to agencies to the range of other media oriented businesses - to finally solve for cross platform measurement.

The conversation on cross platform measurement has been going on for over a decade through the work of several media organizations. But, frankly, these were often siloed efforts that gathered fleeting attention and struggled for cohesive industry action... until now. The push for an industry standard cross platform measurement is not only gaining momentum, it is also consolidating efforts across cooperating media entities.

As part of Advertising Week, the 4As hosted a panel titled “Media Measurement Priorities” that covered the joint efforts of leading industry entities to facilitate cross platform measurement and to decide, as an industry, what media measurement needs to look like in this new media environment. “What we have now really doesn’t fit the bill,” noted Louis Jones, Executive Vice President, Media and Data, 4As. 

He added that, “We need to have a collaborative point of view,” that also takes into account the needs of agencies. From there, the 4As set out to coordinate the efforts of companies and organizations working on the issue and published a whitepaper titled, Media Measurement Priorities,” as the first salvo.  

The paper set the stage for discussion of the most important priorities from an agency’s perspective. 

Here are the top five:

      1.       Unduplicated Reach

      2.       Currency

      3.       Short term versus long term

      4.       Walled garden and identity graphs

      5.       Attribution

Agency Perspective

Even for these top priorities, there may be flexibility in the solution. Take, for example, Currency. Historically, the TV industry has transacted on a strict set of metrics for currency. For Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom Media Group, “We are in a world that is complicated enough that if everyone had access to the right underlying data, different partners could agree to trade on different metrics and that would be okay.” His point was that agencies seek impressions on specific target audiences and the way these impression are valued may vary across different platforms.

For Ed Gaffney, Managing Partner, Director of Implementation Research and Marketplace Analytics, GroupM, the currency just has to be well understood, transparent and stable. “We can have multiple currencies,” he explained, “We have them now,” with digital and TV and even within TV there are a range of metrics. “As long as everyone knows how they are counted, and can use that data, for both sellers and buyers, it works well.”

For Gaffney, Unduplicated Reach is critical to address waste. But the barrier, according to Steuer, is that the measurement currency for TV “is based on volumetrics and not real humans” and is delivered, “on the aggregate and not the individual. We need a census to tie together and understand device delivery to actual humans.”

Industry Perspective

In addition to agencies, there are businesses and organizations that are deeply involved in the measurement discussion. The MRC has been pivotal in establishing cross media measurement standards. George Ivie, Executive Director Media Ratings Council, explained that the MRC has been involved in a two year effort resulting in a brand new industry standard for video that was just released in early September. Three hundred 300 people and 175 companies participated. “There was a lot of discussion about measurement of exposure and how important it is as a building block to understand who saw your ads and how many times they saw it and the ability to de-duplicate,” he noted.

This standard provides the framework for equalizing the exposures across platforms and de-duplicating it across some general principles: Establishing a  common set of granularity, second to second level starting with counting impressions and then equalizing them as much as possible across the various video outlets, viewability, measurement and requiring invalid traffic and fraud filtering, the ability to measure people – demographics and targets – completes and duration weighted view of impressions so as to measure how long the viewable conditions persisted.

The reaction from the industry was both accepting and guarded. Radha Subramanyam, Chief Research and Analytics Officer, CBS, noted that measuring, “viewability is a good thing. Nobody wants invalid traffic. Duration is important. But the devil is in the details. Implementation versus theory – there is a big gap there.” Brian Smallwood, “Different advertisers are going to want to transact on different measures. This (MRC report) is one way of standardizing it but there are other parts of the ecosystem that want to trade or operate differently.”

If you ask me, an effort that has created the foundation for the trans- corporate cooperation today has been through CIMM. This organization has been working on universal content labeling to help stitch together content on various platforms and devices through Ad-ID and EIDR. Without a UPC-like code, there is no industry wide way to insure that content is accurately being captured wherever it airs. Jane Clarke, CEO and Managing Director, CIMM, noted.  “It is an evolving time in television and we don’t have a granular, nationally representative impressions-based TV measurement system in place right now,” she explained, because the data is siloed, behind walled gardens and not shared.

But, as there is strength in numbers, the first powerful step has now been taken. “The tech environment innovates. Technology improves. The standard is a first step in a long journey,” Ivie concluded.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

It’s Time to Welcome the 55+ Demo into the Media Mainstream

Some topics of conversation in media never get old and that includes the ongoing discussion of the value of older consumers. For years, many of us in programming, marketing and advertising have been engaged in one long conversation regarding the accuracy of age-based demographic breaks that effectively exclude Adults 55+ from the sales value equation. “Oh we don’t need to specifically target Adults 55+,’ they will say, “because we can reach them anyway – they are heavy TV viewers.” Well not so fast, sonny. Today’s 55+ are not like 55+s of yesteryear.

While this has been argued before, it bears repeating. According to economic trends, today’s older consumers command much greater buying power compared to current and previous generations. Boomers alone represent 70% of the total net worth in America and account for 40% of total consumer demand.  It is time for the media metrics to keep pace with economic realities.

Media Ecologist Jack Myers believes that it is vital for the industry to come together and change the traditional age-demo breaks. “We need to recognize the economic and societal evolutions that have occurred since the 1960s and embrace a new set of demo standards,” he stated. He proposes the following breaks:

Ø  Teens/Tweens (11-17)

Ø  Gen-Z (18-24)

Ø  Millennials (25-45)

Ø  Gen X/Y (45-62)

Ø  Boomers (63-75)

Ø  A new combination for sales targeting purposes (45-72)

The History

Let me share some history that will help explain why this makes sense. It all started out innocently enough. In the early 1960s when advertisers divided the media pie into simply households and men or women, upstart network ABC, which trailed in overall household performance, had a great idea; why not further divide the population into age breaks? After all, the younger-skewing ABC argued, younger people were less fixed in their brand loyalties and were more open to change and experimentation. At the time, they were referring to the rebellious Baby Boomers who were very different psychologically from previous (and future) generations. Unfortunately, the idea of youth worship based on age alone resonated with advertisers and programmers. Today it has stultified into dogma.

A sales positioning idea that was initially conceived to more easily categorize audiences into future, peak and declining brand building and spending years has, in my opinion, led the industry astray. In fact, one could argue that 18-34, 18-49, 25-54 and 55+ breaks never really made much sense. Did an 18 year old ever really spend like a 49 year old? Does one fall off the face of the economic earth on their 55^th birthday? Of course not!

If there was ever a cohort that should be actively sought by advertisers and programmers, it would have to be psychologically based, not necessarily age-based. Who came of age when consumerism was at its peak, when advertising was the epicenter of choice consideration and when media technology was young and experimental? Baby Boomers. Today they are still active in the workforce, are in their peak earning years and are as changeable and rebellious as ever. Maybe it’s time to finally reevaluate the age-break demographic to better reflect the behavioral dynamics of the generations it purportedly represents.

Changing Business as Usual

Older consumers in 2018 are very different from older consumers in 1960. In 1960, if you were 55+ you could have experienced a Depression and two World Wars in your formative spending years. There were also much fewer brands and the major forms of communication were newspaper and radio. Today’s older audiences grew up in a time of relative luxury and peace, the grand expansion of media communication and advancements in healthcare that has extended not only longevity but also quality of life. How today’s older adults live and spend are worlds apart from their grandparents and parents.

Getting to Consensus

In this highly competitive media world where reaching the “right” audience is pivotal to success, how do we get all of the players to agree on a modification of the standard age-break ranges? Megan Clarken, President Watch, Nielsen, understands the dynamics of the marketplace. “Reaching industry consensus is always a journey, especially when it comes to determining changes to the currency,”  ​she said. “For example, if an older-skewing network pushes for an age-break re-definition, there will be a younger skewing network that would push back. Our role is to encourage the conversation and provide the data and insights - whether its age-gender or advanced demographics beyond the standard demos - that the industry needs to transact with confidence.”

But there is some movement in reaching a new consensus. “While the vast majority of industry deals remain a demo currency, revisiting demographic breaks is an important piece,” advised Radha Subramanyam, Executive Vice President, Chief Research and Analytics Officer, CBS Television Network. “Going forward, moving away from age/gender as the foundation of planning and buying seems to make the most sense. The framework needs to be audiences and audience cohorts, though defined more broadly than some of the segments currently popular in the programmatic ecosystem,” she added.

In a world quickly moving to more addressable consumer segments, some believe that a change in the standard age breaks are unnecessary at this time. “Given the industry’s continued push to implement purchase-based targeting, I am not sure there is a strong rationale for what looks to be subtle changes,” stated Ed Gaffney, Head of Implementation Research and Marketplace Analysis U.S., GroupM. “Targeting begins with planning. The buying teams simply refit the planning target to a demo to facilitate media deals.”

Further, as we head more towards cross platform measurements, Gaffney believes that it will inevitably lead to a new targeting consensus. “The linear networks will most likely not be interested in moving to different demos when they could move to targets that better align with those used in digital buys (signal based), and digital is not very interested in using age based targets for anything but comparative purposes,” he added.

Others believe in going further by dropping age-break metrics entirely, even for comparison purposes. John Rosso, President Market Development, Triton Digital, a leading online audio measurement service, explains, “The real question in my mind is this: why care about age at all? The digital world has moved on to audience targeting and, through initiatives like Open AP, the traditional media world seems to be embracing more advanced audience segmentation as well. Do we still need to use demographics as a proxy for behaviors and intents when we can target those things directly?”

Nielsen remains the unbiased arbiter of age-break demographics preferring the industry to decide for itself what metrics work best for the buy/sell paradigm. Because of this, Nielsen must remain neutral. “We don’t set the rules for the industry. We rely on the industry to negotiate the rules amongst themselves. And there isn’t any general industry committee that I know of that actually says ‘this is the rule’ which makes it tough to reach a consensus. Nielsen is a third-party, independent organization so it's difficult for us to do it on behalf of the industry,” Clarken concluded.

In my next article on this topic, I will explore how outdated and irrelevant media buying and planning tactics are costing the media industry billions of dollars.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

comScore Announces Cross Platform Measurement Advancements

For those of us who have been in the research sector of the media business for a number of years, there is nothing as heady or as exciting as what is happening now in our field of expertise. As Gian Fulgoni, Co-Founder and CEO, comScore noted at their recent industry meeting, “There is a digital revolution the likes of which we have never seen.” And this revolution is creating measurement innovation, not only in the data driven audience marketplace but also in cross platform measurement solutions. 

comScore has recently announced an advanced version of their cross platform measurement capability which could spell the end of age and gender proxy measurement… eventually. (We all know that the media business takes time to adjust to new metrics and protocols.) But the excitement engendered by the introduction of various datasets and their application to measuring viewer and consumer behavior is beginning to mark a distinctive change in the rate of new measurement metric acceptance.

According to Fulgoni, comScore is focusing on the need to be nimble in order to meet all technological changes. Their approach to cross platform measurement includes four pillars:

       1.       Granularity for precise measurement in cross platform and also by individual platform.

       2.       Understanding the unduplicated reach across platforms.

       3.       Buying and selling TV on advanced audiences, beyond age and gender.

       4.       Moving towards an addressable and advanced TV future.  

In a world of panels and census data, do you start with a panel and build out or do you amass census level data and model demographics? comScore’s approach is data scale first then the creation of a unified panel and census metrics. “We believe that scale drives quality,” stated Fulgoni, “You can’t start with a panel and build up on it.” Scale becomes important when measurement must include an expanse of devices; comScore’s Total Home Panel is built to measure content across  mobile, network-connected set top boxes, streaming OTT, PC, home theater, game consoles  and Iot including such devices as wearables, smart speakers and audio systems etc  for unduplicated reach.

These advancements in cross platform measurement could not come too soon for Julie DeTraglia, VP Ad Sales Research, Hulu, Ed Gaffney, Managing Partner, GroupM and Beth Rockwood, VP Portfolio Research, Turner. As DeTraglia explained, “Hulu lives in a world where we have all of the benefits of television and that is television content on a television screen. We have some challenges in measurement that we are working on. But we have all of the benefits of digital. If you want to see what the future of television looks like, look at Hulu today. We sell platform agnostic and are also looking at how ads differ by platform.“ 

Attaining true, unduplicated cross platform measurement is not an easy task. “There is a long list of must haves which makes it hard to do (cross platform measurement) well,” stated Rockwood. “Certainly the quality of the measurement and the scale of the measurement are critical if we really want to be able to get a good view both of consumer behavior and campaign effectiveness. Also understanding how consumers are receiving information in a series and unpacking all of that to understand consumer journeys,” she added. “It’s quality, coverage and scale, in no particular order. We need all three to get a good view of what is going on out there,” Gaffney concluded.

Having a third party measurement that is privacy compliant and can also measure the full range of devices for specific audience targets will enable both buyers and sellers to realize the full potential of their brands. But it will all depend on whether the industry is ready to break with the marketplace measurement metric tradition. “The currency is still age and sex and will be for the near term,” admitted Gaffney. But based on the measurement developments from companies such as comScore, maybe the future is closer than we think.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

CIMM Continues to Pave the Way for Cross Platform Measurement

CIMM, The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, hosted its 5^th Annual Cross Platform Media Measurement and Data Summit last week. The organization has accomplished a lot in the past five years. 

Jane Clarke, CEO and Managing Director, outlined CIMM’s mission which is to “foster innovation in cross platform measurement, bring more granular measurement to TV and look at measurement in new ways. We pilot test new measurement tools to meet the needs of users. It has been a multi-year effort of working together to drive change in media measurement.” 

Goals and Actions For Cross Platform Measurement

CIMM seeks to establish a clear understanding of consumer centric usage across all platforms, to measure exposure by pilot testing touchpoints and to evaluate the results. “Enriching media data quality is the key to ROI and data quality is increasingly important for enhancing the buying currency. CIMM is advocating for more passive measurement at scale, linking census based with shopping behavior,” Clarke stated as she announced a Measurement Manifesto that has three goals and eight actions.

The “must haves” for cross platform media measurement are:

      

       --Accurate representation of cross device universe at scale to use advanced audience segments.

Ø        --An efficient supply chain to real time, with timing comparable to digital.

Ø        --Comparable metrics across platforms with a standard video to average minute to measure ads.

The Actions taken to achieve these goals are:

Ø        -- Embrace competition.

Ø       --  MRC standards.

Ø       --    Move beyond panels, embrace big data and move to census measurements in TV and digital.

Ø       --  Bring more return path data to market for planning. Nationally represent SmartTV and STB data.

Ø       --Measure Out of Home in the ratings. Measure across all possible media points.

Ø       --  Measure both households and individuals.

Ø        -- Implement standardized metadata for content and ads.

Ø       --Demand transparency from 3rd party data companies, linking IDs across devices and channels.

The Impact of Data

Artie Bulgrin, SVP Global Research & Analytics, ESPN, moderated the first panel on Cross Media and Data and asked his panel whether we will see a move away from age and gender demos in buying and selling media across platforms. Michael Strober, in a new role as EVP Client Strategy and Ad Innovation, Turner, replied, “Currently there is too much of the business activating on age and gender.” But, he added, “We are working towards a variety of measurements.” Michael Piner, SVP Investment, MAGNA GLOBAL, was more open to change and said, “We are working towards it. If we can use and overlay third party data, then we don't need (to buy on) age and gender.”

Data rules, according to the panel, whether first or third party. Benjamin Jankowski, Group Head, Global Media, MasterCard, explained, “We have our own data which drives quantitative actions. We can create segments - not individuals because of privacy. The qualitative side is more ahead of the curve. We use social listening to know people's interests.” Piner said, “We use a tremendous amount of big data, are incorporating it into the data stack and ingesting it into our planning system.”

Progress on Cross Platform Measurement

Alan Wurtzel, President, Research & Media Development moderated a panel of end users. When asked how they were using the data to facilitate cross platform measurement, Don Robert, EVP Research and Analytics, A+E Networks spoke of his company’s recent efforts. “We are monetizing cross platform effectively by examining how each platform looks when you take out the commercial units. We are looking at program impressions by duration using currency data based on impressions,” he explained.

However, data delivery lag is a challenge for an industry used to overnight ratings. Ed Gaffney, Managing Partner, Director of Tactical Planning, GroupM explained, “While problems can be solved by research and good quality data, there also needs to be good velocity. The data can’t be six months old. We need it now so we can see what lift we get.”  This means that, for the foreseeable future, the industry is expected to stick with the usual data suspects for upfront buying.  “Nielsen is currency,” Gaffney said, “That is where we are going to do business. We work with comScore (for digital) and Nielsen (for TV).” And yet it is still an open field for more competition In the future. “No one can crack it to everyone's satisfaction,” stated Gaffney, “We will spend the money (for more services). We won’t be happy about it but we will spend the money.”

Participate!

Collaboration is key and George Ivie, Executive Director and CEO, Media Ratings Council is leading the charge. “Accreditation is a difficult road,” he admits, “but we hope to be done with a cross media standard by the end of 2016.” The MRC standard to follow is the duration-weighted viewable impression filtered for non-fraudulent, valid, human traffic.

The most important thing is for all of us in all areas of the industry is to get involved and help facilitate standardize-able measurement solutions. Ivie concluded with a plea. “Participate!” he said.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com