The Challenge of Measuring Video Inventory. An Interview with AMC Networks’ Tom Ziangas

The question of measurement looms large, especially in how we treat remnant inventory.  How should the industry monitor, handle and best measure this inventory?  Tom Ziangas, Senior Vice President Research for AMC Networks, recently participated in a panel on addressable advertising hosted by Mitch Oscar, USIM’s Advanced TV Strategist, for BIA.  Ziangas shared his views on how addressable will impact linear and remnant inventory measurement.

It should be noted that the definition of remnant inventory can vary by platform. For addressable it is often the fraction of a specific unit that might be unsold. In Linear it can be the full unit that might then be sold as direct response.

Charlene Weisler: What do you envision as the best methodology to measure addressable?

Tom Ziangas: Just by the virtue of legacy measurement and the utility of census level RTB STB data, we will need a hybrid approach to measure addressable ad exposure.  While today national ads are measured via Nielsen panel to provide C3/C7 commercial Ad Measurement, measuring national addressable will need the hybrid approach of panel and census level data.  Addressable will be a footprint of the total U.S., we will still need to back out the addressable impressions (census level RTB STB data) from the currency C3/C7 national panel measurement from Nielsen, and while this complicates measurement, we need to make sure that the advertiser is made whole and provide accurate measurements of their ad placement in the linear and digital world. This applies to both linear and remnant inventory with a little caveat, since most of remnant inventory is not guaranteed we may have more flexibility for non-currency reporting.

Weisler: What are the other challenges that you see regarding data and measurement in this space?

Ziangas: As stated above, the biggest challenges are the “mixing” of methodologies (panel and census) and creating standards amongst the addressable players in this space and how we will all work with Nielsen to get this done.  Just think about if we have Nielsen traditional linear measurement on one side and we will need to integrate addressable measurement from multiple players (Canoe, OAR, Nielsen Addressable, etc.) on the other side; all side will need to collaborate together to make the buying/selling process seamless.  If this does not happen, we will be in the same place VOD is in today, under-valued and under-monetized. These challenges affect both linear and remnant similarly, we need to have measures and metrics for both to best understand the performance of the casmpaigns.

Weisler: Where do you see measurement in this space next year at this time?

Ziangas: While addressable is moving in the right direction, it is not keeping up with the pace of change. While I am talking about measurement, there is a lot of work that needs to be done operationally, and along with that, we need the time to make sure this process from traffic to Broadcast & Technology to planning and reporting is all in sync.  So, we will take the steps as we are doing today, such as pilots with our partners, learning with our partners and implementation.  We will be in a better place next year this time, but it will continue to be a work in progress.

 

Revenge, Confusion and Kumbayah at the TV of Tomorrow 2019 Conference

Between ATSC 3.0, Addressability, live programming such as news and sports and OTT, this year’s NYC TV of Tomorrow conference offered a great sense of anticipation regarding the future of media. From when I first attended the conference in 2012, the ecosystem has gone through a series of seismic changes, lurching forward in one area and contracting in another. Recall the first rumblings of Addressable? Now it is reaching critical mass. Remember 3D TV? Yeah, neither do I. This year, the prognosticators report the following:

Revenge of the Nerds

There is more data than ever which leads to much more complexity in how it is used. “There is a greater need for examining multiple data sources, rather than simply relying on one or two” stated Helen Katz, Senior Vice President and Director Global Analytics and Insights, Publicis. “Given the increased complexity in consumers’ media and purchase behavior over the past five years, buyers and sellers both need to look to more granular data to do their jobs effectively.”

To that end, Julian Zilberbrand Executive Vice President Audience Science, Viacom/CBS, got it right when he said, “If you don’t have your nerds, you’re dead.” Arming your company with the best talent in data science, research and analytics is a must to compete in this ever complex media ecosystem. I have been in the nerd sector of the industry for decades so this evolution in industry attitude is very welcome.

We Are All Confused

As frenetic and confusing as the change is for those who work in media, the world is equally so for the consumer. “There is consumer confusion about how to access content,” stated Julie DeTraglia, Head of Research, Hulu. “We went into homes and found that people don’t understand their own TV sets.” Natasha Hritzuk, Vice President Consumer Insights, WarnerMedia, added, “It is a challenge for consumers. People feel overwhelmed. They have to grapple with the device proliferation and the choice of content.”

Part of the confusion on the media side is the changing ways to do business. “The rules we grew up with are antiquated,” stated Peter Olsen, Executive Vice President Ad Sales, A+E Networks, “It was good when we started because TV didn’t have to sell itself,” but now there is more competition. And even current business rules are not as simple as we may think. Take, for example, calculating attribution. “When I view engaging content, I won’t switch to buy something. I will wait,” explained Radha Subramanyam, President and Chief Research and Analytics Officer, Viacom/CBS. “Half of TV impressions are not counted because they are time shifted. Tons of clients do attribution around live. But no one will stop in the middle of a great program to buy something, especially something expensive.”

A Media Kumbayah

For the first time in our history, there has been a partnering of not only frenemy companies who compete on the same side of the business but also those who compete across the negotiation table. Programmers, networks and content distributors are forming working open partnerships with agencies, brands and advertisers. This cross industry collaboration is a welcome advancement where agreed upon solutions can be facilitated and moved more quickly into market.

David Ernst, Vice President, Advanced TV and Digital Insights, A+E Networks, explained that, “We offer insights as to how well campaigns on our networks are driving results, driving KPIs, drive to the web or retail location. What is changing is the dynamic of media seller and buyer. Once at odds, we are now all in same boat. There is more collaboration with agencies.” Olsen is, “confident in the bigger picture that TV works and we need to get there fast. It will take a couple of years but when we put our heads together we find many solutions.”

Be Careful of Simple Solutions

To mitigate this confusion, there may be a temptation to enforce simple standardizable solutions. But this lack of nuance would be a mistake. Collecting all content into an app, for example, aggregates content from many properties which can be good but, recalling her past experience in CPG research, Hritzuk warned that, “We are on a point of inflection to become commoditized. I worry about commoditization of inventory.”

Bringing different datasets together can solve for the deficiencies in each. Tom Ziangus, Senior Vice President Research, AMC Networks, noted, “There is a level of granularity that we don’t have with Nielsen but a level of information on Individual viewers from Nielsen that we don’t have from big data,” he explained. However, bringing different datasets together is complicated. “We need to ‘de-babelize’ the dataset [into one common language],” noted Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom, “Or we can’t have same buying and selling combinations.” For Andrew Ward, President, Ampersand, the industry should, “move away from panel survey-based to deterministic.”

Remember too that we are not always seeking the same solutions. “PlutoTV is free so we are not competing for money but competing for time. People feel overwhelmed and confused over places to watch things. For many, Pluto is easy, like turning the TV on. We are not trying to get dollars out of people’s pockets. We are competing differently,” explained Colleen Fahey-Rush, Executive Vice President, Chief Research Officer, Viacom.

For Katz, she believes the industry will eventually come together to create a common data platform that incorporates data from multiple sources. How soon that will happen remains to be seen. Stay tuned for TVOT 2020.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

How to Harness the Media Evolution -The Big TV Conference

The first Big TV Conference, held in NYC in September, focused on a range of issues in the TV ecosystem from a variety of perspectives. But the Leit motif of the two day event revolved around data and its impact on the business. To buyers and sellers, data is as vital as ever. To content creators, data plays a greater role in understanding what is resonating with viewers, becoming, by extension, a crucial part of the creative process.

Framing the Issues

With radical transformation impacting traditional business models, how can companies manage the future? Domenic Dimeglio, Senior Vice President Distribution and Operations, CBS Interactive, framed the discussion by asking, “what is the business model that fills in the white space with consumers?” while Robert Weisbord, Chief Revenue Officer, Sinclair Broadcast Group, noted, “There has to be something unique about the offering.”

Executives can no longer complacently work towards simply meeting short term goals. Annual revenue budgets are only the start. “We have to prepare for a different marketplace with streaming cord cutting and much more data,” stated Jon Steinlauf, Chief U.S. Advertising Sales Officer, Discovery. It often requires creating internal teams focused strictly on the future. “We have a team within Discovery that was further along than we were to position better for the future,” Steinlauf added.

For Krishan Bhatia, Executive Vice President, Business Operations and Strategy, NBCUniversal, “Because we are a global distribution and content company, we spent two to three years integrating our portfolio to create value together.” This macro level approach could not be achieved unless there is internal cooperation and buy-in. “Culture is a driver of success,” he concluded.

Audiences

Kathleen Finch, Chief Lifestyle Brands Officer, Discovery, when asked how she would reach audiences of the future noted that it will be, “hard to know what the market will bear,” in terms of costs. “I don’t know what I am spending,” she added. The real challenge is measurement which, as Adam Rattner, Executive Vice President, Managing Director, Samsung, Starcom, explained, “Until we get great measurement it will be hard to monetize.”

For Lisa Heimann, Executive Vice President, Corporate Research and Strategy, NBCUniversal, “No one data source is good for anything. Which data is good at answering what questions?” She added, “Sometimes we need a census data set, sometimes we need to connect to viewing using panel data. The key is how we are looking at and using that data. Sometimes we look at specific sources and other times we rely on data science group using machine learning and AI.” For her it is essentially comes down to a mix of all data sources.

“We have to go beyond looking at overnight ratings,” she warned, but added, “Well, maybe for sports or news but it is dangerously unreliable. Not all viewing is captured by Nielsen,” because content across platforms, “need to have the same ad load.”

Advertisers

Advertisers are demanding two things from content providers; “Transparency of data for cross platform measurement and the creation of really compelling content. These are CEO-level questions,” stated Rattner.  For Sam Armando, Senior Vice President National Video Intelligence and Investment, Spark Foundry, there are measurement challenges that need to be addressed. “Clients want single source measurement to capture viewers across all screens,” he stated, “We have a lot more (data) pieces but the pieces don’t fit together.”

Researchers are stepping up to meet advertiser needs. Tom Ziangus, Senior Vice President, Research, AMC Networks is committed to, “Closing the loop,” in the consumer journey and, “Working closely with agency partners,” on addressing this challenge. “It is all about collaboration,” as he added, “We must figure it out together. What are the best practices and learning from our mistakes.” Don Robert, Executive Vice President, A+E Networks, confirmed that approach. “We take a consultative approach to try and figure it out. We are very committed and believe in the power of TV.”

Content Creators

There is considerable work being done to track and quantify how people discover and sample shows, “how they catch up and which programs they stick with and which ones they don’t,” noted Heimann.  “Content is forever now. How can we optimize it? Sometimes it is more down the road.”

For Courtney Thomasma, Executive Director, BBC America, AMC Networks, “We have more data than we know what to do it. We have ten times the amount of data than we had ten years ago. There is the danger of getting lost in the noise and quantity of data. How do we fuse? Who has access?” she asked.  Her solution is, “more experienced research minds to strategize the data,” which I heartily support.

And the numbers don’t have to be big for a show to be considered a success. Passion for a show counts which requires a, “Holistic sense of who our audiences are and weighting which audiences are most valuable for us,’ she added. Using research insights from one passionate show can often lead to the next. Using data insights, BBCA realized that Killing Eve was a good replacement when Orphan Black, with a passionate fan base, ended its run.

For Donna D’Alessandro, Senior Vice President, Programming and Strategy Insights, Discovery,  who started her career in Research, the challenge is the, “need to look fresh and real in speaking to a consumer right now”  because programmers only have a short window to engage the viewer. “If a viewer turns it on and thinks, it’s not for me, they will turn it off and never come back.”

Conclusion

With all of the challenges and opportunities in this Brave New World of Media, Ziangus summed it up rather succinctly. “We are a lot smarter and a lot dumber,” he quipped. That rings true to me. For all of the data acumen and insights we harvest, sometimes it seems as if we have more questions than answers. And that is perhaps the biggest challenge of all.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Secret Society Update: Challenges (and Solutions) of Workflow Revealed!

After seeing the standing room only crowd at the Secret Society meeting at Turner Ignite in New York this past week, one can see that the secret is finally out.  Mitch Oscar, USIM Advanced Television Strategist, created the Secret Society “to talk about issues that affect the Advanced TV space,” and this particular session was filled with speakers on the subject.  The primary takeaways follow below.

Workflow
The subject of workflow looms largeTo those companies that are grappling with the evolution towards Advanced TV.  Just like the plumbing in a house, workflow is an unheralded but vital aspect of bringing data-driven targeting advertising to television viewers.  It is perhaps for that reason that it doesn’t get more coverage in the media.  But Oscar is focused on getting the industry to consider the challenges and solutions of changing workflow and chose presentations that highlighted the subject, from departmental transitions such as the changing role of research to cross-industry solutions such as OpenAP.

The Evolution of Research
Research’s role has ascended over the past few years with the advancement of data-driven solutions.  Tom Ziangas, Senior Vice President Research, AMC Networks, presented a compelling case for the expansion of Research Departments.  “The increasing complexity of the media landscape has transformed the workflow of the Research Department,” he said.  To that end, he noted that the requirements for a job in research have changed in the past few years from communications majors to data scientists and mathematicians.  In addition, research teams have become less hierarchical as the number and extent of internal client departments have become more formalized.  “Research counts nearly every department in the company as either a stakeholder seeking insights or partner required for measurement across growing data sources,” he explained.

But it’s not just hierarchy and headcount that has changed for research.  The massive influx of first and third-party datasets as part of the measurement process has placed research in the corporate epicenter with the demand for creative (and accurate) solutions.  “The number of data sources research is now digesting has grown ten times in the past ten years driven by digital platforms and deeper granularity into linear viewing,” Ziangas concluded.

Cooperation Across Competing Media Companies
It is becoming clear that traditional media companies will have to work together to establish the industry standard protocols that enable inter-business cross-platform sales processes.  Important first steps have been taken such as OpenAP, which is a partnership between Fox, Turner and Viacom.
Larry Allen, Vice President, Ad Innovation and Programmatic Solutions, Turner, and Noah Levine, Senior Vice President, Advertising Data and Technology Solutions, Fox Networks Group, gave an update to OpenAP.  Allen noted that the collaboration on OpenAP “sought to solve a couple of problems”  -- the need for a democratization of data and the need to taking friction out of buying television was apparent.  “We sought to free up the data so you can see it, build segments against it and see if clients want to buy against it,” he added.  Making it a cross-corporation effort avoided the problem of media entities grading their own homework.

In an update, Levine noted that OpenAP is currently in the process of recruiting national TV programmers to join in.  The challenges to data-driven adoption such as the lack of scale in on-boarding, inconsistent segments across companies and no third-party posts would be solved by joining it.  “We are focused on making it easy and simple with the ability to activate it across all national media companies at once," Levine said.  "OpenAP solves the problem of consistency in defining the targets."

OpenAP offers “an agency [the ability] to share a segment within itself,” Allen added.  For those who wish to explore the platform, OpenAP.tv just launched for linear TV only as phase one.

Conclusion

The media industry is being hit with many changes all at once from data flow to complex world of attribution modeling. But unless we get the workflow flowing and agree on new industry standards in both data usage and segmentation, the ability to maximize inventory value across devices and platforms will be limited.

 


This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Data, Data Everywhere in the Upfront. An Overview - Part 5

This is the fifth and final part of a series examining many of the new data initiatives of major data companies. Parts 1 through 4 outlined the many data initiatives, their scalability, whether their services were gaining traction in the industry and the issue of a standard metric to link systems and platforms. Now in Part 5, we tackle the role of Research in an era of Data. Is its role changing? 

Is there a future of Research as we know it? The question addressed here in Part Five was precipitated by some major changes over the past year including the transitioning of one research department into a data specialist department, layoffs at some other research departments and the building of new, business intelligence departments working in tandem with traditional research departments but reporting to different managements. 

According to ARF CEO Gayle Fuguitt, “There's never been a better or harder time to be in research, insights and analytics, and there's never been a more important time. Data is just facts, without inherent insight.  The role of the new analytics leader is to develop growth ideas and quantity opportunities that bring consumers' needs and values to life and make an emotional connection.”

My Take: My concern about the future of Research is not some random paranoia. There is scuttle talk that even Sales, that sacrosanct area of perpetual expansion, might retrench with the advent of programmatic TV. With change there is transition and even upheaval. So why should Research, even in this age of data worship, not be negatively impacted as well? One would think that the focus on data would catapult Research’s role in C-Suite decision-making but I am of the opinion that the results so far are mixed. In fact, executive titles in Research are now tending to leave off the term “Research” while adding “Analytics”, “Insights” and “Strategy”.  When did “Research” become a title to be avoided?

Question 5: What is the status of the Research department in your company? Has the data imperative changed the perceptions of your departments? If so, how?

Beth Rockwood (Senior Vice President, Market Resources, Discovery Communications): The research group’s responsibilities are growing; we are in the fortunate position of being able to demonstrate the value of our inventory in new ways.  Collaboration with sales teams, agencies and clients, has always been important, but now is much more central to our role as researchers. 

David Poltrack (Chief Research Officer, CBS Corporation and President of CBS VISION): It hasn’t changed the perception of our department because we have been looking beyond the demos for many years. We have been working with our sales team on usage based data and metrics that are more definitive than age and sex to evaluate our media offerings vs the competition. The fact is that we have formalized the program and significantly increased our investment because more advertisers are beginning to embrace and talk about these new data sources and the quality and quantity of the data is much greater and more comprehensive today. More and better data and growing advertiser interest have moved research into a more operational part of the business.

Tom Ziangas (SVP Research and Insights, AMC Networks): The AMCN Research team under my leadership has managed a very simple mission statement which is, “WE MAKE EVERYONE SMARTER”.  Our data initiatives are a function the lack of movement by industry research partners. We need a holistic view into the world of media and how it is being consumed across platform & device, our data initiatives are exposing key stakeholders in Senior management, Ad-Sales, Programming, Marketing and Affiliate on how we can better target, segment, use 3rd party data and understand the behaviors’ of our consumers.

Geri Wang (President ABC Sales, ABC): Research continues to be a critical component of our ABC and larger TWDC organization, and, as the emergence of new types of data and use cases evolve, we are continuing to invest in new capabilities and people across our organization.  We’ve hired a number of data scientists to work specifically on data modeling and targeting initiatives, and have in the past year created a new group within the NY Sales organization responsible for all data-driven and programmatic sales strategy and implementation.  We expect those investments in people and capabilities to continue.

Katie Larkin (EVP Advertising Sales Research and Strategy, NBCU): All of advertising sales research came together under one roof last year. We are focused on our clients’ needs and bringing comprehensive data-driven capabilities to the marketplace. We added a dedicated analytics team and we are pushing forward to find new metrics in order to give clients better insights. Our move to Cogent Reports for CNBC’s Business Day is an example of needing to go beyond Nielsen because their measurement of out of home viewers and highly affluent audience is inadequate. Our research and insights continue to evolve as we drive and lead in this space of data and analytics.

Paul Haddad (SVP and General Manager Advanced Data Analytics, Cablevision Media Sales): With the availability of census level set-top box data the concept of research and reporting evolves to accurate and accountable measurement that leads to advanced insights and analytics. We see data as glue across all platforms. Without it, there would be no realizing the full value in new advanced advertising techniques. Data is plugged into every platform and every step of our work flow, and comprehensive census-level data is crucial for more accurate measurement in general.

Kern Schireson (EVP, Data Strategy and Consumer Intelligence, Viacom): Research has long been an essential aspect of our business, but we no longer separate data from research. Data and research work in unison at Viacom, and both continue to broaden and evolve at our company ever-rapidly to stay ahead of the pace at which our consumers’ consumption behaviors change as they engage with our brands and stories across an expanding array of platforms and experiences.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com