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

The Update on Advanced Advertising

They say that the more things change the more they stay the same. The recent Advanced Advertising Summit this past week was notable in that the issues facing the industry seem to remain the same year after year. 

But the good news is that the technology is advancing to a point where the ability to seamlessly integrate digital and linear is ever closer to launch. Another positive change, for me, is the presence of more and more research and data executives in attendance at these types of conferences. When I first attended these events, there were few of my research compatriots there. Now we are even on sales panels!

Challenges in Advanced Advertising

Irwin Gottlieb, Senior Advisor WPP, in his keynote, explained that while advanced advertising has been around for years, it is not scalable yet. It is “somewhat scalable today,” he averred, “there are two minutes an hour (available) in local but it is not scalable in terms of support systems or inventory.” On the bright side, according to Gottlieb, there are no technology obstacles because companies such as WPP made deep investments in tech years ago. But there continues to be business obstacles where short term thinking, intra company fiefdoms and local vs national interests have enabled digital to “eat TV’s lunch.”

Scaling from a test to a full buy is another aspect of scalability that brings pain to the industry. Dan Riess, Executive Vice President of Ignite, WarnerMedia, noted, “We can always get clients to start a test but have find ways to scale that will trigger the technology to make it happen.” As a stopgap, he starts manually “to see how it works,” but there are, “so many different datasets, for example, that make it hard to scale.” Ultimately, we “need to move faster.”

Legacy systems are another challenge. Mike Mayer, Executive Vice President Sales Solutions, NBCU, explained that they are taking a “one order one report approach,” but if the order trail takes them from a legacy to legacy system, the buy has to be put together later. “It’s complicated,” he admitted, and it “can’t change overnight.”

Add to this the issue of silos. “Walled gardens make it difficult to develop business,” stated Jennifer Koester, Director of Telco and Distribution Partnership, Google. The solution is, “more standard segments,” noted Maureen Bosetti, Chief Investment Officer, Initiative, who added, “how it is being measured, more standardization and a privacy standard on identification,” with full compliance.

Positives in Advanced Advertising

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Many aspects of advanced advertising are hugely successful, offering manifold opportunities for both digital and television. Although linear TV is declining in usage, TV as a whole is adapting well to this multi-platform, advanced advertising ecosystem. Jason Brown, Senior Vice President, Head of Ad Sales partnerships, Xandr Media, finds that granular data enables us to “reach micro segments,” where the result is that “many advertisers are moving up the funnel,” and “TV is now full funnel for purchases, depending on the category.” This has resulted in “price hikes well beyond inflation.”

If there is one thing that TV does well, it is storytelling. Paul Alfieri, Chief Marketing Officer, Cadent, explained. Within the realm of advanced advertising, “a marketer can tell their story to consumers where they are and when they want. Is it seamless and we close the loop.” TV, according to Alfieri is learning from digital. “The industry has simplified it into one funnel and advertising is getting more sophisticated. It’s happening quickly because of paradigms you have in digital,” he stated.

No one is complacent. Many companies are creating their own systems that address advanced advertising like NBCU’s CFlight which, according to Mayer, “combines linear with digital impressions and sells deal with total impressions.” Others are joining consortiums like Vizio’s Project OAR, which stands for Open Addressable Ready. Project OAR includes Disney’s Media Networks, Turner, Xandr, Comcast’s FreeWheel and NBC Universal, CBS, Discovery, Hearst Television, AMC Networks and Inscape with the goal to define technical standards for linear and on-demand formats on smart TVs.

Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom Media Group, recommended, a “focused on education on both the strategy and investment side.” He sees a big shift from linear TV to a more expansive view of TV in the digital space where we, “can use same strategic targets.”

Conclusion

So, yes, there are still vexing challenges in getting advanced advertising to scale, especially in national inventory, and we still need to agree on standards for measurement, segments and protocols. But the industry is hyper-focused on these addressing issues, often working together and always committed to progress.  That might be the greatest positive of them all.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Tackling the Big Media Industry Issues at GABBCON 2018

Reaching the right consumer is getting much easier and at the same time, far more complicated. At the  GABBCON conference, issues like privacy and the right to be forgotten on the consumer side faced off with fraud, viewability and attribution challenges on the advertiser side. The playing field is not only changing, we may not be able to discern the best path to the goal posts. 

And in the spirit of the time, Gabe Greenberg, CEO and Co-Founder, GABBCON, made a concerted effort to enlist a diverse group of speakers to participate on panels. This resulted in an event that included new perspectives on media issues. Here are some takeaways:

Choosing a Consumer's Tattoo, Shadow or Twin

What is the best way to target a consumer? A panel moderated by Wendy Dunlap, Senior Vice President Digital Investment, Blue449 (previously Optimedia of Publicis Groupe), parsed out the various ways marketers can profile a consumer – whether a Twin, a Shadow or a Tattoo.  

Dunlap explained that a Twin is an individual’s digital representation formed by the aggregation and analysis of their behaviors, preferences and attitudes as expressed in the digital world.  A Shadow is an outline of a real-world identity but is prone to distortion and misrepresentation based on imprecise data signals in providing a complete picture. A Tattoo, as coined by Bethany Mach, Chief Digital Officer of Initiative, is a permanent marker of an individual’s digital activity that doesn’t go away but can continue to morph based on new information.  

“The replica of a real consumer is an amalgam of their various behaviors,” Dunlap noted. “A tattoo is a great metaphor,” she continued, stating that we should track “how it holds up over time and what we add to it” and “how it changes, “as more attributes are added to it or whether it fades away.” 

With Employees, Should it be a Right Brain or Left Brain Hire?

Throughout the day, panelists brought up the challenge of hiring the right people – those with that careful balance of right and left brain capabilities and experiences. And should new hires be from media or outside media? These are no small issues for the industry at a time when there is a need for both creative and analytical solutions and the knowledge of the past and the capabilities of the future.  

Mach stated, “I am looking for new types of people to work for me.  I want a data scientist or engineer.” However, filling media slots with left brain experts may be missing an important ingredient in discerning consumer motivations and behaviors. Shouldn’t we also be hiring anthropologists, Dunlap countered? “It’s good to have an analytical perspective but you also need a social science background,” she added.

Blockchain is Coming. Be Ready. Or Else.

There has been a lot of talk about how Blockchain will impact the Media industry but what exactly is Blockchain? Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom Media Group, defined it, “as an ecosystem. It is a technology method that provides a secure chain of custody for any digital transaction, data, or personal attribute all the way through a system. Where it is where it came from and what aspect of it you can use.”

It was agreed that Blockchain should be embraced and not deferred. Natalie Monboit, Head of Futures at Starcom, warned, “It will hurt you if you are not involved.” She advised to start now by looking ahead and asking, “What is that big disruptive vision? What is the future state?  And then work backwards. You have to be in it in order for it not to hurt you.”

While some may feel that the future application of Blockchain is just another monstrous transformation to upend business as usual, there are those who look on the bright side. Monboit concluded, “Blockchain has potential to solve for fraud and clean up our industry. It unearths everything we understand about engaging consumers. It is a lot bigger than just solving for current issues in ad tech.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

GABBCON Focuses on Audience Based Buying Challenges and Opportunities

GABBCON, a relatively new conference now in its second year, held its conference in New York City last week. The event offered visionary thinking about the progression of programmatic, audience based targeting, cookies, blockchain technology, data and brand safety.  In his opening remarks, Gabe Greenberg, CEO and co-founder of GABBCON, Inc., noted that "audience based buying is at a turning point. We need to break down walled gardens and find new solutions to bring the industry together."

The ways to bring the industry together were outlined throughout the day:

It’s All About Data and How We Use It

Data continues to be one of the hottest topics but the focus of the data discussion is shifting. For some, data has become paramount, even over programming. According to Peter Naylor, SVP Sales at  hulu, “Audience is the product, not the shows. We sell audiences first. Data allows us to go beyond age and demo.”  Denise Colella, SVP Advanced Advertising Products and Strategy Advertising Sales, NBCUniversal, explained, “Data is paramount to everything we do. We have access to all types of data including Comcast STB data that allows us to help our advertisers and reach niche audiences. Data advises everything for us and we need to be able to measure it properly.” But, she continued, “there is new data all the time. It is a living and breathing thing. We are seeing more brands bringing their own data to the table – their own first party data.”

Understanding which data sets in combination are the most insightful is emerging as one of the key challenges and opportunities for marketers. Gary Reisman, CEO and Founder of LEAP Media Investments agrees: “While it’s true that data is powerful, we have almost too much data and are employing mostly tactical uses of that data.  The next generation of audience-based targeting will be focused on transforming the data sets we have into intelligence, leading to better informed strategic planning and audience creation.”

Guarantee Brand Safety

There has to be a sense of comfort among advertisers that their ads are being showcased with the right audience and with contextual brand safety. Fraud takes on many forms and is an impediment to robust advertising growth. John Montgomery, EVP of Brand Safety at GroupM, explained, “Brand safety means different things to different people. The risks that have emerged for some of our brands include fraud, privacy, viewability and ad blocking. We looked into data rights and data permissions, addressing one by one. We haven't conquered the beast but we caged it. We have done what we can.” But more is expected. “Marketers have moved trust transparency up the digital chain. It is the number one priority in the next year,” he added.

Embrace Blockchain Technology

To those who may not be familiar with the term, blockchain is the public ledger of bitcoin by which payments are executed peer-to-peer. Since blockchain essentially tracks transactions in a highly secure manner, there are those in our industry who believe that its roll-out in audience-based buying will help in tracking the consumer path with a higher level of trust and efficacy. Stacy Huggins, Co-Founder/CMO at Madhive, noted that, “the cost of trust is enormous. So blockchain is gaining a lot of adoption. The protocol secures data and lowers the cost of trust.” Jim Wilson, President at Premion, a Tegna Company, added that clients are asking for transparency - what networks were bought, who is seeing the ad. “We are trying to create standards. Blockchain creates transparency and consistency. It is efficient for publishers and advertisers.”

Put an End to Walled Gardens

Walled gardens, Montgomery noted, “are safer and there is less fraud.”  But walled gardens also create and perpetuate data delivery silos that make it more difficult to standardize and blend measurement across platforms and devices. For Howard Shimmel, Chief Research Officer at Turner, audience measurement today still has many challenges. “We still measure in silos and walled gardens create this challenge. We don't understand what drives outcome. What is it about a given exposure that drives an outcome?” he asked.  Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer at Omnicom Media Group, agreed, “We need some standardization across the walled gardens. We need some building blocks of comparability - how to count a duration, what is a viewability standard.” The answer, according to Shimmel is, “Get everyone in a room together and decide on the platform we need to build. We need to get aligned to where the future will be.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com