Merging Digital and TV Ad Tech. Interview with TiVo’s Joan FitzGerald.

Joan Fitzgerald, VP Product Management and Business Development, TiVo, is a TV data expert whose work on the quantification of media defined her entire career. “I have had the good fortune of working with some of the world’s leading marketers on data and analytics innovation projects, including CPG, pharma, retail and media’” she stated. 

Her work at comScore helped to frame cross media measurement. “As new data became available – whether it was purchasing data or CRM data or digital data or television viewing data via the set top box – we developed new techniques for quantification of media effects, including econometric modeling and then attribution modeling,” she added. Now at TiVo, she is putting her skills to work using new data assets combined with new analytics techniques to achieve breakthroughs in understanding how advertising works. 

Charlene Weisler: Tell me about your current job at TiVo.

Joan Fitzgerald: I’m head of product management and business development for the emerging area of programmatic, data-driven video.  In joining TiVo, I was interested in tackling the question of how to integrate audience selling and data-driven TV into our operational and monetization systems.   Rovi – which recently acquired TiVo and kept the brand name -- had acquired a start-up with the right idea: Revenue and inventory management software that enables TV to deliver on the promise of audience-based targeting and data-driven TV, with significant operational workflow improvements. 

Charlene Weisler: How have TV and media measurement and research changed from when you first started?

Joan Fitzgerald: TV has always been a data-driven business, but it’s the form of the data and the availability of the data that has changed.  Visibility into viewership used to be limited to 3^rd party research.  It’s hard to imagine this now, in this era of big data viewership assets, where there is visibility via STB, ACR, digital tags, DMPs and any number of other technologies.  The other significant change is the digital ecosystem itself:  It’s hard to understate the changes that the digital ecosystem has caused, including new ways of thinking about how TV can be more effective.    

Charlene Weisler: Where do you see the role of data in measurement going in the next three years?

Joan Fitzgerald: Media brands have made major investments in people, including data scientists and ‘big data’ engineers, and ad tech systems, such as inventory management systems from tech companies such as TiVo. Already, these investments are having a positive, transformative effect on the video business model, including expanding the currencies used for transactions so that they are more closely aligned with how marketers manage their brands.  The payout from this investment is going to significantly increase in a 3-year timeframe, with media brands continuing their historical track record for growth and innovation.    

Charlene Weisler: Give me your state of the art appraisal of cross platform measurement

Joan Fitzgerald: Today, digital and linear TV are separate throughout almost the entire ad tech stack.  This impacts our ability to measure the two platforms together.  As TV morphs into IPTV and into ATSC 3.0 delivery, the executional layers of the digital and TV ad tech stacks may become more similar to each other.  They may even converge.  This presents an opportunity for better cross platform measurement.  There’s a business layer too that needs thoughtful integration.  Media brands want to reduce complexity for their advertisers and sell “video advertising” rather than TV and digital separately.  Ad agencies are motivated to reduce the costs of operations in the same way.  We need systems that support an integrated approach at the business layer, while managing the execution layer so that we achieve new benefits such as measurement but continue to optimize by source of inventory.      

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

TV of Tomorrow. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Tracy Swedlow, Editor-in-Chief of [itvt] is a futurist who always seems one step ahead of the industry. That is why, if you want to stay informed, her TV of Tomorrow conference in NYC each year is a must attend.

Last year the conference focused on data. In 2013, it was TV Everywhere. Both of those issues are still very relevant and were part of this year’s program. This year, Swedlow focused on "touch points in the industry that include live streaming, programmatic, OTT, TV Everywhere, measurement, Virtual Reality, personalization and app-ification." The burning issues for her are, the “distribution of content. Can everyone keep up with all of the new content being made available? There are so many companies trying to build a relationship with the viewers directly. So the management of that, the distribution of that, the tracking of that is really critical.” 

We not only still face a myriad of industry stresses that continue unabated but, like a hydra, these stresses form many new heads. Here are some of them:

The App-ification of Television
Many agree that the definition of TV has fully evolved from being hardware (“The TV Box”) to, as Swedlow said, "anywhere where video, interactivity, data, where you go to find content, augmented reality, virtual reality, even digital signage – that is a form of TV – it could be on your watch. It could be anywhere where video is today. It could be a hologram standing in the middle of space. And I think all of that will be part of your TV experience in the future.”   

Now that Apple is opening up its platform to a larger developer group, how will that impact video offerings? "How do you turn television into an application?” posited Swedlow. With that can come the introduction of motion interaction with content, how viewers engage with content as well as an evolution of how the business sector engages in commerce.

App development is not easy. Colin Dixon, Principal, nScreenMedia, started off his panel on apps by saying, “You can't be a successful network unless you have an app that delivers content to devices. But it is hard to have a great app.” Keeping it simple and making the content easy and fast to access are important elements to a successful app. And don’t stop there. Martijn van Horssen, COO, Accedo warned, “You have to monitor the quality of your stream all the time. It is a continuous process to offer the best experience. Technology advances and you have to advance too.”

Measurement Challenges Continue

There is arguably no easy way for measurement to fully encompass all of the new services and distribution points now available in the industry. According to Joan Fitzgerald, SVP Television and Cross-Media Services, comScore, “The system we rely on to measure (TV) content has been failing us.  We are not capturing all of the impressions consumed by consumers.” Sherry Brennan, SVP Distribution, Fox Networks, noted, “The changing video consumption is fractured across more platforms but there is still a lot of viewing on TVs. What is missing is currency in non-traditional platforms.”

“Measurement is going to be catching up all the time,” intoned Swedlow. “When they finally figure out some standardized way to add tags that can track individual assets and everyone accepts that standard then I think we will have a really powerful industry that can drive monetization through all these networks. But until then, a lot of people in the live streaming world are coming up with new ways to monetize what they are doing. If the companies out there trying to develop measurement and tracking technologies don’t solve this situation, they may find that someone else will come up with a new solution.”

The Changing Advertising Models

Between Addressable, Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) and Programmatic, there are more ways to target consumers and go beyond the traditional forms of buying media. But it is not easy. According to Brennan, “Collectively we create issues by licensing our content to platforms that have no advertising like Netflix. Consumers get used to viewing content without ads. And so we face a double whammy. DVRs are another aspect. Viewers can watch without ads and we don't get paid more for that. We can't target ads into linear yet but can target ads in time shifted platforms. We may require viewers to interact with an ad before they see the content. We are using technology to feed ads in front of content where the viewer has to interact and then they can skip all of the other ads. But we need to be able to scale. We are at the end of the beginning to do what we want to do.”

Let’s Get to “Provable ROI”

Howard Shimmel, Chief Research Officer at Turner Broadcasting, threw down a gauntlet to business-as-usual by saying, ”We need to measure audiences and break down the walls around dayparts. Dayparts really don't matter. We need to measure outcomes. Today we take ad money with a negotiated guarantee and then report the delivery that we promised to deliver. Tomorrow we need to be able to deliver outcomes and conduct planning for outcomes. Eventually we need to get to a world of predictive outcome measurement. So if we know that Conan sells soda better than cars, we need to be responsive to that inventory.  I need campaigns measured and integrated all the time so I can normalize. We need ‘Provable ROI’ for guaranteeing sales. I don't care about age and sex.”

2016

What will be the TVOT focus next year? According to Swedlow, “Virtual Reality, emerging television and the new consumer platforms coming out.” And then she added, “As well as sticking to the same topics as this year’s conference.” Some issues are eternal.

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