ARF Re:Think Helps Researchers Rethink the Future Media Landscape

ARF’s annual Re:Think conference, scheduled for March 23-26, 2014, is a research extravaganza, if you will pardon the hyperbole. Each year, the ARF offers valuable insight into what is in the bleeding edge of media research, culling studies and insights from the best research papers in the industry.

This will be Gayle Fuguitt’s first ARF conference under her leadership and the list of topics and speakers indicate that the ARF is looking to offer immediately implementable and actionable research-based information from a range of industry experts. The conference focuses on three main areas: 1. Big Data, 2. How today’s Corporate management views Research and 3. Career Development and Mentoring.

This year’s Re:Think is notable for the number of agencies attending (+30% than last year) with 168 papers submitted around big data, cross platform measurement , social and mobile consumer engagement, and researcher of the future. The format of the conference has changed to accommodate as much new information as possible. According to Fuguitt, “Our new format will have shorter, 10-20 minute presentations focused on the business results and immediate practical applications.” An example: Artie Bulgrin of ESPN, will give a brief update on Project Blueprint, revealing “compelling new data that will validate last year's findings on multiplatform usage and the effect on incremental reach and time across day, week, month or campaign.” He will also share “unique insights about individual platform usage and fundamental principles that we see emerging and explain how ESPN plans to use Blueprint as part of our broader ESPN XP initiative for clients going forward."

I spoke to Fuguitt about this year’s conference in a series of videos:

Charlene Weisler talks to Gayle Fuguitt about the 2014 Re:Think in this 4:29 minute video:

CW: Gayle, what makes this year’s Re:Think different from past Re:Thinks?

GF: What I want to do is to take the biggest, most dynamic issues facing the industry and get them out into the public discourse as a conversation, not just a formal conference. I see an incredibly dynamic media landscape change with the consumer in control and new touch points creating all this new data -  It is the Big Data that everyone is talking about. The theme for day one is “rethink consumer engagement” in the new dynamic media landscape:  beyond big data to breakthroughs in cross platform measurement, and mobile, social engagement.  The second big dynamic is what I call “Impatient Bosses” of the C-Suite who are asking us in the Insights and Research part of the industry to sort all of this out and help understand how all the consumers are consuming media and how to create great advertising, how to allocate resources and how to make decisions in real time. The third big dynamic is looking at what we call the “Researcher’s Identity Crisis”. With all these new jobs and job titles, marketing and analytics jobs, social media strategists, there are a lot of new roles and the evolution of current roles in the research sector. Budget allocations are being shifted from what have been historically research roles to roles that fit more within the context of this new media landscape. So my goal at this conference is to help our members and the attendees at the conference to rethink consumer engagement, rethink creative, not just counting, and rethink careers.

Gayle Fuguitt talks to Charlene Weisler about the changing research roles in the industry today. The video is 4:12 minutes:

Gayle Fuguitt tells charlene Weisler what is not to be missed at this year's ARF Re:Think in this 5:47 minute video:

  

CW: What is not to be missed at this year’s conference?

GF: What should not be missed are the discussions of new applications of some existing techniques and the ability of leaders in research to apply new mobile connections with consumers. Consumers are on mobile and now we have some new insights into consumers and mobile media. There are also some surprising segmentation techniques that have been developed around television. While we are focusing on the dynamic media landscape as a broad landscape, television is still critically important in our industry. In a result that is both surprising and comforting, there is as much innovation going on in some of the traditional forms of advertising media for consumers as in the very new bleeding edge.

From what I see, the new ARF, under Gayle Fuguitt’s leadership, is committed to creating a relevant and valuable future for researchers. Whatever their new titles may include and in whatever department they reside, there has never been a better time to be in research. This year’s Re:Think not only will help current researchers stay relevant and knowledgeable, it may also encourage the next generation of media mavens to consider research as a viable and fascinating career path.

Cross Platform Measurement’s Leap Forward

The cross platform measurement market is awash with various solutions. But none that are able to successfully measure non-duplicated individual demographics across platforms… except Project Blueprint. That is why Project Blueprint’s recently announced phase 2 pilot test of development is so exciting.

I spoke with Jane Clarke, Managing Director of CIMM in a series of videos about Project Blueprint – data collection, the impact of comScore’s eight year contract to license Nielsen Audio (previously Arbitron) data, areas of development, points of difference with other measurement services and CIMM’s role in Blueprint’s development. 

In this video, Charlene Weisler talks to Jane Clarke who reveals the news About Project Blueprint:

Jane Clarke talks to Charlene Weisler about Project Blueprint's Basics Demos and STB Data:

Project Blueprint uses Arbitron as a partner and Jane Clarke tells Charlene Weisler why CIMM is involved in this cross platform effort:

Project Blueprint, which has developed over the past few years through collaborations with CIMM, and a major investment over the past year from ESPN, offers a unified and nationally scalable sample that incorporates comScore’s hybrid online and mobile measurement, Arbitron’s (now Nielsen Audio’s) portable people meters for TV, radio and out of home­­ and 5 million set top box data households from several new sources. All of these datasets enable the measurement of the unduplicated reach of TV, radio, desktop, smartphone and tablet, including time shifting, DVR playback and viewing by children. And, because of its hybrid TV measurement methodology of blending individual person level TV viewing data from PPMs with STB data, Blueprint enables a form of person level STB data analysis down to the telecast level for even long tail networks.

“This is one of the best aspects of the measurement” says Clarke. “The PPM is an individual measurement device for both radio and television. This enables us to link radio and television data individually to digital behaviors. That is significant because the big challenge in cross platform measurement is - How do you de-dupe across  platforms? You can’t de-dupe at a household level. You can’t de-dupe at a television set level. You have to de-dupe at an individual person level. This is one of the biggest breakthroughs in the research methodology.”

Interestingly, it also solves the STB data issue of STB on / TV set off. Clarke says, “The combination of the PPM television viewing data and the return path data is brilliant because each compensates for the weaknesses of the other. It’s not only the demographics but also the ability to know if the set is on or off. Further, Arbitron (now Nielsen Audio)and comScore created a calibration panel – a five media calibration panel – so it is a single source, at the individual level, calibration panel which is one of the ways they can get the de-duplication across platforms measured accurately. ”

All of these advancements are what the industry says it wants. According to Clarke, “CIMM has taken a POV among the members as to what we think the criteria should be for successful cross-platform measurement.   We are pursuing the Blueprint project because it comes close to meeting these criteria.”

The other cross platform measurement service in the market is Nielsen which is working to extend their linear TV currency measurement to include mobile viewing of C3 eligible commercial ratings as well as digital ratings from their Online Campaign Ratings. "Nielsen's role is to measure consumer behavior in a device and platform-agnostic way and to provide the ratings that are used to buy and sell more than $70 billion of advertising," said Megan Clarken, EVP Global Product Leadership for Nielsen.  

According to Nielsen, the combination of their TV currency with their Online Campaign Ratings will create cross-platform ratings on a gross audience basis. Smartphone and tablet viewing must match TV programming exactly before they can be included. Those cases where the viewing elements do not match are not included in the current version of their system.

Further, Nielsen’s system cannot calculate unduplicated reach and frequency at this time. According to Nielsen’s press department, “In 2014 we will introduce DPR, which will provide R/F/GRP for TV program episodes viewed on computers, smartphones and tablets.  When available those metrics will allow for comparison with TV ratings but will not de-duplicate viewing.  Our goal is to deliver in 2015 a cross-platform program rating that includes unduplicated viewing across TV and digital.”

The CIMM member companies form the roster of current clients for Project Blueprint include ESPN, Disney ABC Television Group, Fox Broadcasting Co., NBC Universal, CBS Corporation, A&E Networks, Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Univision Communications Inc., Viacom, Publicis Groupe, GroupM, and Omnicom Media Group. With the new capabilities of Project Blueprint, more will certainly follow.

The Premiere of the Maxxcom Collaborative Alliance

The first Maxxcom Collaborative Alliance which made its debut this June, focused on digital media and featured speakers from Conde Naste, ESPN, Time Warner Medialab and Fordham University as well as speakers from Mitch Oscar’s Media Dadaists from Collective, Rentrak, Trendrr and TVB. All in all it was a spirited forum that spawned new ideas across print, television, mobile and cross platform.  Two videos from the Maxxcom Collaborative can be viewed here:

Participants in the June 2013 Collaborative share their insights here:

Steve Farella and Mitch Oscar discuss the Collaborative - the past, the recent and the future:

The Collaborative has an illustrious history. Mitch Oscar’s vision to ignite the “Televisual Revolution’ began with his quarterly Collaborative Alliance events which launched in 2004. Oscar has set the futuristic pace since then, offering prescient insights into set top box data before it mainstreamed, addressable advertising before it became a cogent business model and multi-platform advancements before it hit the zeitgeist. He tries to keep pace with the ever evolving media landscape and is often ahead of the generally accepted wisdom. Even his title of Televisual Application Executive is a bit ahead of the media curve. I don’t know anyone else in the industry with that title!

“Fragmentation is happening and continues to happen” says Steve Farella, CEO of Maxxcom “But today we featured a number of different vendors and a number of different pieces of technology who illustrate that not only is television a strong medium but that digital video is a great complement whether to extend a reach of a campaign or add to the frequency of a campaign.”

 “What we tried to do with the Maxxcom Collaboratve was address video across platforms, second screen, social TV. These are things that we think about all the time” says Oscar. He put together a series of panels to more deeply explore the impact of digital media on social, print, television, advertising and measurement.

Whether extending the influence of print and its second screen with Scott McDonald’s Conde Naste presentation or combining digital media with set top box data to extend the reach of television, as Justin Evans from Collective did or describing live broadcast mobile television as Stacey Lynn Schulman did, it is clear that digital media has a strong role to play especially in conjunction with other forms of media. But what about measurement? Glenn Enoch of ESPN offered a solution in the form of Project Blueprint which combines five platforms – TV, Radio, PC, Smartphone and Tablet – and Arbitron and comScore data into one integrated measurement.

Turner’s Howard Shimmel presented The Five Principles of TV and Social Media and Second Screen Engagement with a neuroscience based study from the Time Warner Media Lab. Through the use of biometric monitoring including heart rate, skin resonance, fidgetiness and eye tracking, Turner was able to ascertain unexpressed yet biological consumer reaction to media stimuli and cross platform. They also included a quantitative survey to measure branding and were able to find the right combination of on-air and digital touch-points for specific tested programming and their viewers.

Closing the forum, Professor John Carey of Fordham University discussed the history of mobile phones. His entertaining presentation took us down memory lane from the heavy and cumbersome shoe box size mobile phone and the early modes of car phones to today’s pocket size entertainment center. In the span of 80 years we have gone from carrying a contraption in one’s car that needs to be wired to a telephone pole to something that fits in your pocket and works anywhere in the world.

This just goes to show that digital media is still a moving target. Technological advancements make it critical that we as an industry always try to keep up, if not ahead of the consumer.

The Collaborative is open to all in the media. Contact Mitch Oscar if you want to get on the list.

Cross Platform Measurement with Help From CIMM

One of the most frenetic areas of measurement development today is in cross platform. Creative and scalable solutions are being crafted that enable programmers and advertisers to gain a more complete picture of how the usage of various media platforms compare to and blend within each other.  There is no standard yet, but there are a myriad of possible semi-solutions that can link some, but not yet all, platforms under one metric. Progress is being made and it is only a matter of time (and data) before we get to a complete and scale-able measurement.

CIMM’s annual Summit this past week focused on cross platform measurement. True to its name and mission, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement seeks to transform the way audiences are measured. Managing Director Jane Clarke has a clear vision of CIMM’s mission in cross platform and has been a great advocate of advancements in measurement. She said, “This year’s Summit showcased that exciting new methodologies to better understand the complexities of cross-platform media measurement are being formed, and the industry as a whole is taking notice.”

The half day meeting included an update on CIMM’s TAXI (Trackable Asset Cross Platform Identifier) Initiative which CIMM launched two years ago and which CIMM continues to support in the form of project investment and analyses. TAXI’s importance is being recognized. Jane explained that “the widespread industry adoption of Ad-ID and EIDR coding for all advertising and video content assets, the goal of our TAXI initiative, received resounding support from Summit attendees.”

TAXI, with its advocacy of a UPC type standard for content (both programming and advertising) across all platforms, is one very important area of need in developing cogent measurement. And the need goes beyond measurement. Citing the four “R’s of asset identification, Research, Royalties, Rights and Residuals, it is clear that the importance of verifying asset exposure across platforms serves many purposes. While TAXI's first recommendation is to register assets using Ad-ID and EIDR, there is also an initiative to develop an open standard for binding the metadata to the asset, so it won't be lost through transcoding and compression. This may be with a watermark or fingerprint technology (ACR) or by using the closed captioning space in TV broadcasting. 

In a panel on the Roadmap for Cross-Platform “Exposure” Measurement, the value of asset identification was estimated to be $2.5 billion in recurring economic benefit to the industry. So this issue is no small stakes and the challenges to overcome are not difficult, costly or insurmountable. Janice Finkel-Greene of MAGNA Global gave one example. “Without a standard, it is hard to get show titles to match”. Titles are input by humans and even a simple miss-spelling can cause hours of extra clean-up work. Once a standard code is appended to all content, the match will be based on the code itself and not the capricious spelling of the content title. As Harold Geller of Ad-ID explained, “If you can’t identify it, you can’t operationalize it. If you can’t operationalize it you can’t measure it. And if you can’t measure it you can’t monetize it.” That in itself should be a compelling argument for the adoption of a standard coding system.

ESPN has embarked on an ambitious hybrid solution for cross platform measurement with Project Blueprint combining TV, Radio, PC and Mobile data via Arbitron and comScore. As ESPN’s Artie Bulgrin explains, “The knowledge gaps about how people consume media across multiple platforms are growing and so are the business implications. Our goal is not to create new currencies, but to provide an essential layer of research that begins to mitigate those gaps with a scalable, on-going measurement solution. What makes Project Blueprint so unique is that it combines the breadth of reporting from ‘big data’ measures (census analytics) with the depth of persons-level data from single-source panels.” 

 

All in all, the CIMM Summit proved to be an industry changing event, moving asset identification and cross platform measurement forward. “Our event was a success,” Jane Clarke said, “and CIMM will continue sparking discussions to help marketers make smarter ad buy decisions and receive better return on their ad dollar investments.” 

A solution to cross platform measurement appears closer than ever.