Cross-Screen Measurement and the Impact on KPIs

For an advertiser today, there is nothing more important when buying media than accurate cross-screen measurement to ensure that what is bought delivers on the KPIs. The question is, what are the most important and relevant KPIs today in TV advertising? Of course there are the traditional TV currencies of reach, frequency, rating, and delivery, but industry standard cross-platform KPIs are still being formed. In fact, these may vary depending on the advertiser, the product or service, the platform, and the content provider.

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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

ARF Rocking the Research World With Measurement Mandate

This year’s ARF Measurement conference, a top research-oriented conference, focused two of its 2 ½ days on the challenges in cross platform measurement. Cross platform continues to be a major initiative of an industry that has historically focused predominantly on television. But the days of linear TV dominating the discussion and the historical buying and selling of spots and dots is just about over.

Manish Bhatia, CRO of comScore summed it up by saying "video has escaped television." Once consuming "more of a household’s time than a workday", according to Bhatia, the recent declines in overall linear television consumption can be a bit disconcerting … that is until you realize that television viewing is as robust as ever. “We are not losing viewers”, explains Joan Fitzgerald, (Senior Vice President, Television and Cross Media Service, comScore), “They are consuming on different platforms. In fact, multiplatform consumers spend more time with the content on television.”

My take is that while linear TV usage is declining, television usage as a whole – with all of the on demand and OTT options available - will be as important as ever. But we will miss opportunities to fully monetize its importance if we cannot agree on a standard cross platform measurement. The ARF Measurement Mandate conference presented many different and sometimes overlapping solutions in cross platform measurement. Each touts its own secret sauce data sets and algorithms. The result is a confusing noise of competing sales positions that can, unless we can find ways of merging them, potentially impede a standardize-able cross platform measurement solution. The stakes are high. According to Gayle Fuguitt, CEO of the ARF, “$100 billion will be poured into analytics measurement in next year.”

Here are some highlights:

The Importance of Disconnecting

In a time of increasing connection across a range of devices, keynote speaker, Ariana Huffington, gave a thought provoking talk about the need to disconnect from these devices. "We take better care of our devices than we do of ourselves," she explained. "Burnout is the disease of civilization. While we venerate technology we become hyper connected to our devices and become less connected to ourselves. Being tired has become a new normal. We need to be able to disrupt ourselves before we are disrupted." In her new book, Thrive, Huffington encourages us to move from being necessary to becoming indispensable. And the way we facilitate that is with a scheduled time each night to disconnect and take a predictable time off. "No one can be 24/7 individually. We are not machines," she says. Huffington is one of several CEOs who believe that by purposefully disconnecting we can refresh and become much more insightful and creative.

But While We Disconnect, Data Never Sleeps

Ariana Huffington’s keynote provided context for a conference attuned to the frenetic collection of data that comes from more and more sources. The collection of data occurs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Where do you start? According to Jeff Chaban, Global SVP, Business Integration and Analytics, Starcom MediaVest Group, it is by "following the consumer based on viewing habits ... and it will differ by target audience. (We need to) migrate away from a world where we look at consumers as demos and think about the data mix as well as media mix.”

Mike Clarke, Team Lead, Brand Insights and Measurement at Google, is not restricted to the current TV currency. He spoke of Google’s new Brand Lift platform which uses traditional survey techniques with YouTube. Carlos Jose Fonseca, VP of Knowledge and Insights for Coke suggested that we “optimize for business results and not proxy measurement like clicks.”

Measuring Mobile is Vital... But Measured By Whom?

As video content is consumed on different platforms, our need to agree on accredited measurement standards has never been more important. Currently there is no company that has accredited mobile view-ability data, according to Serge Matta CEO of comScore. He explained, "We all know the problem with view-ability. There is a lot at stake. We want to make view-ability the footer not the headline. It is hard to do because digital is so complicated." His solution is to "set upfront expectations, set standards and use quality measurement."

How Do We Get to One Cross Platform Metric?

Ask a number of media executives what is the one platform-connecting metric to use and you will receive a range of answers. For Joan Fitzgerald, comScore is “working to get one metric across platforms.” The challenges though are formidable. “We use a six minute qualifier for television but not for the Internet,” she explains, “Cross media must provide a single metric, unified demography, holistic accounting of all video viewing behavior, scalable measurement of platform and audience and a metric that is reliable to fit the future of advertising.” Leslie Wood, CRO Nielsen Catalina Solutions, believes that “buyer targets will never be as valuable as demos. Demos are predictable. You know what age you will be next year but will you know if you will be drinking orange soda? We won't negotiate on buyer targets but we will plan on them.” Artie Bulgrin, SVP Global Research and Analytics, ESPN, explained that, “the component of time is so essential to this measurement and it is hard to do. Differences in editing rules come up with different results. This is important because time creates impressions.”

It is my hope that at the 2016 Measurement Mandate, the issues of cross platform measurement will largely be solved, but I am not holding my breath in anticipation. Some are more optimistic. Andrea Zapata, VP Global Research and Analytics, Vevo said, “Five years ago we were only counting two things - TV and the computer. We are now stitching together metrics. If we can agree on better instead of perfect we will get better.” Fuguitt hopes for “coopertition,” which is a blend of competition and cooperation. I leave it to the ARF to get us there.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com