GABBCON’s 2018 Audience-Based Buying Conference: It’s All About Inventory

The third-annual Global Audience-Based Buying Conference and Consultancy (GABBCON) Audience-Based Buying Conference, was held recently in New York City. The 2018 conference offered attendees a wealth of information on how marketers and advertisers can adapt to the new environment of diverse datasets, dynamic real-time ad insertion, and the automation of local television.

Here is what’s looming on the horizon.

Identifying Diverse Audiences
In this age of ever-expanding consumer datasets, what is the best method to determine the most impactful consumer for a brand or network? Jason Wertheimer, vice president of media technology at Horizon Media, noted optimistically that our ability to pinpoint audiences is significantly better than it was years ago.

But Wertheimer says it’s hard to keep up: “Data is flying so fast. We need to make sense of it. Technology is advancing faster than we can keep up.” For some, data is not a panacea. According to Beth Mach, chief digital officer at Initiative, “consumers are finicky and change a lot. There is only so much we can attach to data.”


Read the full article on the Videa blog.

Upfront Relevancy and the Importance (Or Not) of Data. The IRTS Newsmakers Panel.

The IRTS is an industry organization of top media executives and also serves as a charity to build future leaders and industry diversity through an educational program initiative. The recent Newsmaker Breakfast not only recognized the thirty students comprising this year’s IRTS fellows program, it also offered a provocative panel of noted agency leaders moderated by Jack Myers, Chairman and Founder of Myersbiznet.

The panel included Lori Hiltz, CEO Global Brands, Havas Media Group, Dave Penski, Chief Investment Officer, Publicis Media, Dani Benowitz, EVP Director of Investment, Magna Global, Rino Scanzoni , Chief Investment Officer, GroupM and Donnie Williams, Chief Digital Officer, Horizon Media. Myers led a lively discussion of the state of the industry from the upfront and newfront to data, automation and disintermediation. 

Upfront 2016

“The upfront has taken some interesting turns this year,” Myers began, “What do you see happening?” Hiltz responded, “The Upfront is the social currency of our industry. It doesn't matter what platform or channel – we are platform agnostic when it comes to investment. But the Upfront becomes the jump start.” Scanzoni countered, “The Upfront marketplace is irrelevant to what the overall market really is. Last year we saw market declines and this year we expect to see low to single digit growth. There is change and disruption but the fundamentals of our business are not changing.” “There is more of a shift from national TV into digital. We have been looking at digital holistically for a while as a way to reach consumers,” Benowitz noted.

The Importance of Data and Closed Loop Initiatives

 Is data a game changer? “We are all talking about data,” Scanzoni said, “But there is nothing new about data. Yes it is more sophisticated and there is more first and third party data. But we’ve used data in TV for many years. We are doing it better – it is more objective and reliable - but there is no nirvana here using data.” But data is being collected and leveraged in new ways. “The closed loop is new,” said Myers. “There are closed loop initiatives from companies like NBCU, Viacom and Turner. Do they have scale and are they sustainable?” Scanzoni responded, “If I were a seller I would do exactly that but as a buyer I do not see the value in closed loops. You have to have a consistent data set to apply to a full TV portfolio. The correlations are different between Kantar and Nielsen, for example. They point you in different directions. You need a consistent dataset and have to find a way to optimize across vendors. Sellers have to work as a group but that is impossible because they have their own self interests. Agencies need to choose data and do their own correlations.”

Automation versus Human Relationships

Programmatic continues to loom large over the industry. Williams noted, “Programmatic has the ability to help decision-making over multiple media touch points, which is great. Investments become more efficient and it is a true value proposition.” But what about the balance between sales automation and the human relationships that are the cornerstone of our business? Penski responded that, “Relationships are important if not more important in the industry now. We have added people to our staff because to buy programmatically now requires even more people. Keeping talent is a big challenge for us. We are still a very human based industry.” Benowitz added, “It is not a matter of traditional versus programmatic. There is room for both. We look at content, engagement and watercooler talk. But the ability to buy auto intenders is certainly where we should be headed. It won't go all one way or the other. It still takes two people talking to hear the passion in their voice. If we lose that we are in a different place.”

Looking Ahead

Between the impact of data and programmatic on creative and consumers, the industry continues to evolve and innovate. Some final words of wisdom were offered by the panel. Benowitz advised, “Don't be afraid. There is a lot going on but there is room to do business.”  Penski added, “There is still a need for humans in our ecosystem. We must continue to work together and find ways to bring competitors together to work together. It is not just about data.”

This article first appeared on www.MediaBizBloggers.com

Advanced Advertising: Content Remains at the Core ... But Data is a (Very) Close Second

How often does one get to go to a sales oriented conference and hear panelists rhapsodize about data? Not in my corporate lifetime as a researcher for a range of television networks. But if you hang around long enough, I guess you see everything come to pass. And so it was at the recent B&C Advanced Advertising conference as part of television week. 

Here are some of my takeaways from the conference:

Data is Out of Research and Into Sales

It is not what all of the panelists said but it was the leitmotif of this and other conferences on media. And that is, Research is there but more and more in the background while Data is being pulled out of the Research function and moved either into siloed departments reporting to the same C-level executive or moved under Sales. What I thought would be a renaissance for Research seems to be turning into a new level of purgatory. Data without Research-applied analytics and Research-derived insights is worthless in my opinion.

Is It Time For a JIG?

This is arguably one of the most controversial and legally risky ideas in our business. But that does not mean that others are not talking about forming an industry wide group to discuss things like standardization, edit rules and metrics. In a common interest group, all would participate so the issues of anti-competitiveness or antitrust should be moot. Linda Yaccarino Chairman, Advertising Sales and Client Partnerships, NBCUniversal fired the first public volley in this battle by asking, “How do we come together as an industry to better measure our product? It has to be more intuitive and we’ve got to get to a place with a uniform currency. The good thing about Nielsen is that it has decades of experience but it is largely self-reported. We need to come together and coalesce as an industry.” Boom.

Standardization of Metrics is Pivotal

Standardization falls along the lines of forming some sort of common interest group to decide, among other things, standard metrics whether for cross platform, advanced advertising or programmatic TV. The standardization and creation of common metrics came up on practically every panel. As Yaccarino explained, “We have to have a common currency and have to measure the efficacy and value of the consumer experience.” When asked what the greatest impediment to the adoption of TV Programmatic was, Brent Gaskamp, SVP Corporate Development N.A. Videology replied, “No standard metrics.” Travis Howe, SVP Client Services and Operations, Invision, noted, “Standardization will be an issue. Measurement will be an issue.” Shereta Williams, President Videa concluded that, “Measurement has to get better, especially cross platform measurement.” But even if we were to all agree, nothing is easy. Frank Foster, SVP GM TiVo Research added a new wrinkle. He explained, “We currently don't have stewardship systems that can handle the new metrics.”

Will Bigger Networks with Higher Ratings Continue to Dominate?

The answer is ‘not necessarily’, but it depends on who you ask.  For Johnathan Bokor, SVP Director of Advanced Media at Mediavest, “In order to get insight into a program or network we need data depth and we are not there yet. We built a system over the past 75 years where big nets and big ratings get the most money. But as you move to an addressable-based paradigm, this type of spending needs to be justified. If your audience is found on the long tail networks, your cost will be cheaper. Large networks will need to prove that they are worth the premium money. We need to look at context of high rated shows. They need to prove that network primetime is worth the premium.” But Lance Neuhauser, CEO of 4C, countered, “The small guys will still have to figure out a way to prove its value.”

In conclusion, the media landscape continues to shift. Definitions of programmatic, advanced advertising and addressable advertising continue to tangent and merge. But some things are eternal:  Make it Easy to Implement and Bring Value Through the Sales Funnel. Marianne Gambelli EVP Chief Investment Officer at Horizon summed it up when she said, “I want research across all media to unlock better value that we can't get our arms around manually.”

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

comScores’ Big Acquisition of Rentrak Shifts Measurement’s Tectonic Plates

I have to admit that I was surprised by the news that comScore was acquiring Rentrak. While I expected more consolidation in the media measurement space, I didn't envision that it would be two big players joining forces but rather the continued ingestion of smaller companies by larger companies. But this acquisition is not only a brilliant tactical move, it is also strategic. This might finally move analytics and insights in such a way that the industry shifts from the proxy metric of age and gender and into a more standardize-able cross platform measurement.

The news has caused the otherwise politic and polite “non-competition” between Nielsen and Rentrak to publicly flare up during a panel at Advertising Week. This indicates to me that the measurement space is receiving a boost of attention beyond the usual suspects and even perhaps a needed ‘kick in the pants’ to get long-planned initiatives that are ‘still in the development stage’ out into the industry. I believe that competition is good and even welcomed in the audience measurement space today. It encourages evolution, fresh thinking and experimentation in an industry that is undergoing massive transformation with new challenges (and opportunities) to capture media usage behavior.

The Players

Serge Matta, CEO comScore and Bill Livek, CEO Rentrak released a joint statement in a press release saying, “The time has come to build this measurement system of the present and future, and that’s what the merger of comScore and Rentrak will allow us to do.” At the Rentrak Investors Day meeting this past Thursday, October 01, 2015 Livek announced that the joint efforts of comScore and Rentrak “brings two companies together with complementary assets – products, data, people and innovation. This helps us define the future of measurement.”

Upon the news, Nielsen released an official statement to all media outlets which said, "Nielsen has the only Total Audience measurement, comparable across all screens. All of our data is fully representative of the U.S. population, and we deliver truly independent measurement. There are myriad analytics options for the media industry, but Nielsen’s focus is on delivering the actual currency ratings data used for trading billions of dollars in advertising. This requires superior quality, industrial-strength delivery, and gold-standard audited processes and methods."

Industry Reactions

The reactions from the industry to the acquisition ran the gamut from elated to resigned. Some who did not want to be quoted for attribution felt that “despite the perceived benefit to the industry of an emerging Nielsen competitor and possible currency expansion to include consumer demos, from a methodological soundness perspective, it's a pretty unholy alliance.” 

But there were many who saw the acquisition as the opportunity for healthy competition and continued industry innovation. Here are a few quotes spanning networks, agencies, measurement companies and organizations:

Geri Wang, President ABC Sales said: “We support all industry initiatives that get us closer to a true cross-platform measurement solution. Increased resources and healthy competition are always positive things and the expertise of these two firms has great potential. We look forward to continuing and growing our relationship with this new enterprise." 

Alan Wurtzel, President of Research and Media Development for NBC Universal said, "Competition in the measurement space offers the opportunity to foster greater innovation among all the players. The introduction of a new measurement service which would offer a different way to crack the cross-platform code would be enormously beneficial to the entire media industry. It can't come too soon."

Colleen Fahey Rush, EVP, Chief Research Officer, Viacom said, "This merger paves the way for innovation in cross platform measurement to capture how audiences are consuming content on every screen and platform."

Howard Shimmel Chief Research Officer, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc said, “We are excited about the announcement and believe that competition is great and sorely needed. In the past, we have been vocal in our belief that there isn’t any one company that solves all of this. Like many in the industry with diverse portfolios, we need two different cross platform measurements – for a network like CNN, we need to accurately measure total reach across all platforms, including TV, Digital and Mobile. comScore offers that now and our hope is that the product gets better with the Rentrak data. But we still need the ability to see individual shows like “The Last Ship” on TNT and how they perform in live, DVR, C3, VOD, SVOD, which seems to be the focus of the Nielsen Total Audience initiative. Each product has a strength applicable to our business and it may be that we use both services for our insights and sales needs.” 

Dave Morgan, CEO and founder of Simulmedia said, “The comScore/Rentrak merger is certainly good for both of those companies. They gain scale and have a product set that complements each other well. The combined company will get more attention and grow faster than they could have on their own. It’s also good for Nielsen. The merged companies bring more attention into the marketing data and media measurement space and Nielsen will now get credit for the work that they've been doing in cross-platform that the market hasn't noticed. Plus, having a noisier comScore/Rentrak around will give Nielsen more firepower to push back on legacy media clients who may have slowed down some of their attempts to drive more innovation in the past.

Andy Brown, CEO and Chairman, Kantar Media said, “Separately both comScore and Rentrak are good partners in the US and globally. I think the merger of the two companies will only accelerate our current initiatives”  

Brad Adgate, SVP, Research Horizon Media “I think this will be the biggest challenge to Nielsen since AGB rolled out their People Meter sample nearly 30 years ago.” 

Jane Clarke, CEO, Managing Director of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) said, “CIMM congratulates comScore and Rentrak on their announced merger which will help bring needed competition into the field of cross-platform audience measurement. This area is undergoing significant pressure to innovate in response to quickly evolving consumer content consumption habits.  The proliferation of available measurement options will help innovation.  But at the same time, we cannot have a fractured approach to measurement.  While the technology that companies such as the combined comScore and Rentrak will bring to cross-platform measurement are greatly needed, it is still the cooperation and coordination of our industry that will enable effective measurement systems to be adopted.  CIMM, as the industry’s R&D body to advance cross platform measurement, was created to help foster that communication and cooperation so collectively we can address the needs and challenges that await the industry through a unified approach.”

George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director at Media Rating Council said, “I congratulate both organizations and wish them well. My hope is that comScore/Rentrak will continue to pursue accreditation of their existing products which remain very important, and that they will submit whatever cross-platform products they develop to the MRC process timely.  Project Blueprint (comScore’s initial cross platform measurement project) for example was not submitted to MRC, and there is a clear need to audit/accredit these types of new methods. Notably, the new combined entity clearly has a "big data" heritage but I caution about generalizing all of their data assets as "census."  Some sources are census, such as tag-based impression records (these require other actions such as IVT filtration), but others are not census and require specialized adjustments.”

Gayle Fuguitt, CEO & President ARF said: “We at the ARF issued a measurement mandate over a year ago, challenging the industry to deliver common GRP and ROI Metrics.  A valuable advancement is to see industry leaders like Comscore and Rentrak merge to connect their measurement onto one data management platform instead of relying on advertisers to stitch it together. We know that the fastest growing media are the least well measured today, especially mobile.  Further advancements are needed now in mobile measurement and measurement precision across the board for true GRP and ROI metrics for speed to decisions.”

Conclusion

I think that as an industry we should welcome this new paradigm of Nielsen as established measurement of television now getting into digital and a cross platform service versus comScore/Rentrak as established measurement of digital with TV measurement capabilities via STBs and a cross platform service. May the best solution become the standard!

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

Q&A Interview with Brad Adgate, SVP Research Horizon Media

As the market slowly moves into upfront mode, I interviewed Brad Adgate, a media research veteran of 31 years. He is an industry expert on media trends with experience at cable networks and at agencies.

There are seven separate videos in this interview, which cover a range of subjects including Brad's views on research quality, crowdsourcing, set top box data, the upfront season and an assessment of future trends in the media landscape.


Video                                         (length)
Background                                 (3:42)
Future of TV                                (3:39)
Past Trends                                  (2:43)
Crowdsourcing                            (4:03)
Predictions                                   (4:14)
Quality of Research                    (1:45)
Conclusion                                  (1:41)

CW: Brad, you are one of the best people in the industry to answer this question – what do you think has been the most dramatic change in the industry in the past five years?

BA: I think one of the biggest changes and how that impacts research is the availability of information. It used to be that research was a gatekeeper. This may go back more than five years but when I was starting out in this industry in Research we were the ones who did all the runs, the crosstabs, the rankings, the ratings and all but because of the technology it is now available on desktops for planners, buyers and account people throughout the industry so I think Research has changed a little bit in following trends. There is so much that is going on that aren’t available on desktops and I think part of the challenge in Research is just trying to find out what is good data, what is bad data. You can look at five different studies in reports and see five different answers and that can be a little frustrating. But I think that Media is just in an exciting time. There are so many different opportunities going out there for marketers and I think it is Research’s job to find out what is going to work and what is not going to work. We can talk about whether it’s crowdsourcing or whether it’s cars becoming living rooms on wheels or pretty soon you’ll be able to watch live tv broadcasts on your cell phone with the digital transition that took place in June. These are things that all of us have to pay attention to and I think research companies are struggling to keep up with that. Research departments have become a conduit between what the marketers want because a lot of marketers want to be ahead of the curve. Right now a lot of it is a concept buy of an idea of what is going to work and what is not going to work. Research is lagging behind that: the Nielsens, the Arbitrons and MRI try to keep up with the industry but there is a lag there. So we have to pull the two together and try to make some sense of where marketers should allocate their dollars.

Brad Adgate, Senior Vice President of Research at Horizon Media talks to Charlene Weisler about how he got into the Research field and his work background in this video taken in July 2009:

Brad Adgate, Senior Vice President of Research at Horizon Media talks to Charlene Weisler about the future of television and the potential of set top box data in this video taken in July 2009:

Brad Adgate, Senior Vice President of Research at Horizon Media talks to Charlene Weisler about past trends in television and media in this video taken in July 2009:

CW: Let’s talk a little about crowdsourcing. How are you using it? How are you defining it? And how applicable is it for your part of the business in advertising?

BA: I think it is more of a collaboration today between consumers and marketers. It is no longer the top down approach. It’s almost like a bottom up approach. And the internet has made this more of a level playing field – more of a democratization. The strategy of building brand awareness to try and sell product, while still viable, is also how consumers experience a brand or product and how they share that experience with other consumers. You see whether it’s through blogs or Youtube or social networks or any other internet applications. Crowds of consumers are in control of the success of a product.

CW: It sounds like crowdsourcing is “word-of-mouth squared”.

BA: Well it is. I’ve found that the irony in all of this new technology is that two of the oldest media – word of mouth and out of home – are having a renaissance.

Brad Adgate, Senior Vice President of Research at Horizon Media talks to Charlene Weisler about crowdsourcing and word of mouth marketing in this video taken in July 2009:

CW: Where do you see the upfront this year? How do you think it is going to go?

BA: I just think this is going to be the Cuban Missile Crisis – who is going to blink first. Although not as catastrophic, because it’s just between marketers and networks. For years people have been writing off the networks and their ability to get dollars during this period. We had the writers strike last year and everyone predicted doom and gloom because of that but they wound up doing pretty well dollarwise. The year before that it was DVRs and the C3 ratings but it was pretty much business as usual. The networks have been suffering ratings erosion as the competition from cable networks continue to proliferate and yet they still do okay. Now this year we are faced with a slow economy and a lot of product categories like automotive and financial and banking and investment companies that have been beforehand very prominent product categories for television and are having a tough time and we are starting to see perhaps a start of a little rollback – and I would expect to see that there would be a rollback.

CW: In terms of dollars versus last year, do you feel comfortable making a prediction – will it be flat? Will it be down? Up?

BA: I think probably it will be down. It’s just a question of how much down it will be and I think that is what is the delay is right now. I think the marketers want a percentage and the networks want another percentage and that is why there is pretty much of a standstill, why there has been a delay in the upfront right now. What those numbers are, I really don’t know.

Brad Adgate, Senior Vice President of Research at Horizon Media talks to Charlene Weisler about his predictions for the next five years in this video taken in July 2009:

Brad Adgate, Senior Vice President of Research at Horizon Media talks to Charlene Weisler about the upcoming upfront marketplace in this video taken in July 2009:

Brad Adgate, Senior Vice President of Research at Horizon Media talks to Charlene Weisler about the quality of research today in this video taken in July 2009:

Brad Adgate, Senior Vice President of Research at Horizon Media talks to Charlene Weisler about Horizon Media's research blog in this concluding portion of the interview video taken in July 2009:

CW: Brad, is there anything that you would like to add?

BA: I think as a research person it is always good to try keep up with the latest in consumer trends and how consumers are using things. Recently we opened up a blog call the Bradgate blog that is on the Horizon Media website. There is a link there that will take you to the blog. It has some thoughts and things that are going on in the industry.