Another research veteran is striking out on his own after an
illustrious media career. Howard Shimmel, previously of MTV, Nielsen, AOL and
most recently Turner, has formed his own consultancy, Janus Strategy and
Insights. Why that name? “Janus is a
Roman God who looks to the future,” Shimmel explained, “but he does so that in
a way that he can also keep a close eye on the past.”
Merging the lessons of the past with strategies for the
future is a good way to leverage Shimmel’s expertise to, as he stated, “to help
the market move in a better direction and help emerging data research companies
become bigger and more scalable.”
Charlene Weisler: What are the biggest challenges that media companies
face today?
Howard Shimmel: Media companies are challenged with having
to grow ratings, growing subscribers, fend off new competition such as Netflix,
Amazon and Apple and grappling with consumer choice where the cable box is not
necessarily the first choice for viewers. Now they can turn on their Roku
device, they can go to their smart TV app menu on their TV. So the first
challenge is how do media companies migrate to a new reality which could not be
more different from the reality we spent most of
our careers living in. On the emerging research company data side, it is
figuring a way that they can come to market and position their product in a way
that fits within the existing work streams of a media company, how is what they can provide additive to what
the company is doing now as well as the net benefits.
Charlene Weisler: Data management is pivotal. What have you learned
regarding the best practices in managing all of the available data?
Howard Shimmel: A mistake that I think we make in the
industry is that we tend to take the tools that we have always been using –
Nielsen, MRI, Scarborough, Simmons, comScore – and put them in a very different
bucket than the first, second and third party, digital, OTT and virtual MVPD
datasets that we are now receiving. Companies need to think about a holistic
data strategy where they are using each of those assets for its right use case
and also finding ways to leverage across those assets. When you think about it,
a network has great first party consumption data from their network apps. But
all they are seeing is a very limited view of consumption. What they need the
ability to do is find a way through data modeling or data appends to model
linear consumption on top of the first party data, that which makes all of the
applications they are looking to do with their over the top apps more powerful.
So there is the issue of the siloing of datasets that need to be integrated and
then there is the real day-to-day issue of how to leverage all of this data to
better execute strategies.
Charlene Weisler: How far away do you think we are from a
cross-platform measurement solution?
Howard Shimmel: If we think about our career arcs, there
have been times when we’ve had great partnership relationships with measurement
companies such as Nielsen and comScore, we’ve challenged them when they’ve
needed to be challenged. One thing I think the media industry hasn’t done is
really define what it means to have a cross platform solution. If you think
about the heart of Nielsen’s Total Audience it really is the measurement of a
program and get a complete view of a program across all of the platforms where
it is available from linear TV, video on demand, digital, digital if it is
through a provider like Hulu, digital on a network app. And the product scope
is right to do that. But where Total Audience falls short is that we need a data
ecosystem tool that allows us to see traditional linear spots together with
digital addressable spots, to be able to plan those together, to be able to
optimize those together, to be able to steward them together and then on the
backend be able to measure their impact. There needs to be a forcing mechanism
to get the industry to get together and decide what the system needs to do and
then inform the measurement companies.
Charlene Weisler: What should that forcing mechanism be?
Howard Shimmel: I think it should be the advertisers. They
are the ones who are leaving ROI untapped because of the measurement
challenges. Bob Liodice at the ANA has
been clear about this. If they lead, media and measurement companies have to
fall in line and take their lead.
Charlene Weisler: Looking forward, where do you see the media industry
three to five years from now?
Howard Shimmel: I think we will get our measurement act together.
Five years out I think we will do a much better job of stitching together
linear, digital, over the top, virtual MVPD data together in a way where a
media company has a way to take an advertiser, understand what their desired
outcomes are and develop a plan that is not only geared to reach and frequency
but is also geared to some sort of sales impact. You’ll see a lot more success
among major media companies in terms of finding material direct to consumer
businesses and ways to compliment the linear television ad model. Finally I
think you will start to see all of the different content delivery systems –
linear and digital and social- work together. We need to collaborate. As two
industry leaders- Jack Myers and Dave Poltrack have stressed- we should be
focused on finding ways to target below the line marketing dollars, not just
fighting for share of existing media spend.
