Spectrum’s Big Move to Comscore Measurment

Local advertisers have historically faced measurement challenges especially in smaller markets where the data was often unstable and volatile. Spectrum has taken a pro-active approach to solving this vexing issue by partnering with Comscore for their local television advertising measurement.  

For Beth Plummer, Senior Vice President, Chief Revenue Officer, Spectrum Reach, the inclusion of Comscore data is a much needed advancement. “Comscore has a richer massive and passive methodology inclusive of our data in measuring local audiences,” she explained. “Their data is based on real viewing behavior - set top box return path data - and it's anonymized versus panel or other methods that other audience measurement companies utilize.” Overall she felt that the full data set would be more stable, more reliable and able to include Spectrum’s first party data, in a privacy compliant manner. All of these considerationsled to the decision to make the transition to primarily using Comscore for their television sales business.

Prior to this move, Spectrum and the industry in general had posting and measurement issues. “We would tell advertisers that we're going to deliver this many impressions or a certain amount of gross rating points. We were seeing wild fluctuations in delivery after the campaign because the data we used to build the campaign was not stable,” she noted.  Once the switch was made to Comscore, “We are seeing more reliable posts. Our campaigns are delivering based on estimates much more consistently.” Spectrum has also done analyses outside of advertiser campaigns that show that the data is now considerably more stable with less fluctuation day to day and week to week compared to previous data sets. And, Spectrum’s use of Comscore for their television data measurement is used in tandem with Spectrum’s own first party data to complete a cross-platform buy.

According to Plummer, the response from advertisers has been enthusiastic. “The reactions been really very strong. We started our big transition in our southeast region last year which is Alabama and Florida.  (Now) the majority are transacting using Comscore,” she asserted. Her efforts specifically focused on Spectrum’s local sales channels that have suffered the brunt of small sampling and volatile, unstable data. “Our local advertisers are receptive to using Comscore. Many of them were familiar with Comscore and already purchasing that data,” she stated. In addition to agencies and advertisers, Plummer has seen good adoption from clients as well. Her next efforts will include larger markets and more regional advertisers. Right now, “it's predominantly smaller agencies where we've made more traction but we're continuing to chip away at the larger ones,” she said.

One of the challenges Spectrum had to overcome was the legacy buying systems at the agencies that may not be able to accommodate Comscore data for stewardship and posting. While some are fairly entrenched systems, others, she explained, “Are capable of working off additional data sets. Some of them, I believe might be an either-or; You're either a Nielsen shop or you're a Comscore shop. But a lot of the agencies buy Comscore data that they're using for pre campaign planning and other purposes,” she noted. “This isn't just a Comscore problem. This is an issue for any of the new measurement companies that are all trying to figure out how to work with the agency’s buying systems. And, agencies too want to transact using different data sets.”

Frankly, “Agencies really don't like the data instability either,” she confided. “They want us to deliver the campaign's audience that we sold them. It's a lot of work on the agency's backend to deal with makegoods and under delivery. So I think it's better for the agencies and I hope a year from now, more of them will have adapted to using Comscore.”

Plummer hopes for greater industry change. “I would like to see a lot more agencies transacting off Comscore. It's better for the agencies and the advertisers,” she explained. For her, the legacy way of doing things no longer works for the industry and it’s up to the media companies, agencies and measurement companies fix it. “Consumers have changed how they watch TV. They'll say ‘I'm watching TV,’ but they're streaming or watching it on their phone. Our industry has not moved as quickly as consumers have. It's that shift in consumer behavior that has accelerated the need for us to embrace alternate measurements of measurement companies such as Comscore,” she concluded.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

 

Measurement in an Age of Data and Fragmentation

Obviously cross platform measurement in all of its forms is a hot topic now as the de-accreditation of Nielsen’s local and national TV measurement services by the MRC along with a highly fragmented media environment creates uncertainty and challenge.

I was curious as to what the industry as a whole was thinking on the subject and reached out to the Research Wonks, a forum for those involved in media and advertising research, analytics and data science, last week. The response was so large that it required two articles on the subject – one appearing in this publication and the other in Mitch Oscar’s Hocus Focus newsletter.

Measurement Currency – Looking Back and Looking Forward

When they say that the past is prologue, they must be thinking of media measurement. We’ve had a measurement currency (and by currency I mean a standard metric that can be used as a comparison point between companies and platforms) since the beginning of media which has helped guide the valuation of inventory to this day. But as the industry fragments, it can leave us with a sense of uncertainty as the new solutions that best address the new environment have yet to be agreed upon.

For Jeff Boehme, Chief Executive, Executive Media Consultants, the future of measurement is as fragmented as the number of platforms. "I have observed over the past ten years the industry has evolved to create and accept multiple currencies for media planning and buying out of necessity,” he noted and added, “Going forward, successful media executions now must include metrics of performance beyond age and gender to measure outcomes defined outside traditional frameworks. I believe we will continue to embrace multiple currencies, already available through various walled gardens, but need transparency and audited standards to provide the necessary confidence for longer term use.”

Howard Shimmel, President, Janus Insights and Analysis, is concerned that we can easily go off track by focusing on the past while the future looms large. “I worry that we're distracted trying to solve for 2012 research needs- fixing linear TV currency measurement- when what we really need to be focused on is a future state integrated planning/activation/measurement research infrastructure to incorporates all video channels- linear, addressable linear, AVOD, CTV,” he warned. “Building that infrastructure is hard- requires panels, first party data from walled gardens, common target audience definitions across platform, ability to integrate RF forecasts for linear and addressable media, segmentation schema that reflects the way that media is consumed,” he added.

Media Currency – Getting to a Strong Place

There are those optimists, like Radha Subramanyam, President and Chief Research and Analytics Officer, CBS, who are ready for the measurement challenge. “The media measurement industry is ripe for real market transformation,” she informed, “There are now multiple providers of trusted and high-quality data measurement across video platforms, and our own data is critical as well. The measurement marketplace is undergoing massive diversification.”

Yet, the path to currency is still open to discussion. For Michael Vinson, Chief Research Officer, Comscore, the primacy of long standing panels that the industry has relied upon in the past may be up for discussion. “Recruited-sample panels can either be used as the foundational element of a measurement, or to add additional context to a measurement based on large transactional data sets,” he began. But, “When panel response/participation/cooperation rates are in the 10 to 20% range, we can no longer pretend that the panel is in any sense representative of the population. Moreover, media fragmentation puts severe pressure on the size of a panel, beyond what can be plausibly afforded. Therefore, panels should only be used to add context to currency measurements, which should instead be based on large-scale, passively-collected data sets.”

It stands to reason that the best way to formulate industry adoption of a media measurement currency is to gather interested experts together as a working group. Whether this is a consortium of industry organizations such as the MRC or something patterned along the lines of a European JIC, is up for discussion. As Andrew Brown of Andrew Brown Associates, noted, “All vendors no matter how good their data will need 3rd party verification. All players will need third party syndicated solutions to put their 1st party data in competitive context.”

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

 

Measuring Cross-Platform DOOH. An Interview with GSTV’s Eric Sherman

DOOH measurement solutions is one of the most dynamic areas of sales and marketing today which is why the partnership between GSTV and Comscore is so compelling. Their recent announcement helps marketers to better understand the impact of GSTV’s ad exposure on client business outcomes.

GSTV and Comscore

Out of home offers a myriad of opportunities to interact with consumers in more intimate and engaged ways. GSTV, (short for Gas Station TV), offers, “A national video platform reaching one in three adults 18+ on a monthly basis and we reach consumers in a unique moment in their consumer journey. We have the reach and scale of linear TV and targeting and attribution capabilities long associated with digital media,” explained GSTV’s Senior Vice President of Insights & Analytics, Eric Sherman.

The network’s partnership with Comscore is expanding with a new measurement initiative. In the past they have collaborated in advertising effectiveness studies. For Sherman, Comscore’s leading reputation as a, “global leader in cross platform audience measurement was the main reason why GSTV took the partnership even further. Comscore, according to Sherman, is known for, “Their standard-bearing online tools and also their trusted television audience ratings service. And trust is paramount.” Sherman added that Comscore offers holistic video measurement offering business measurement, “that is as inclusive as possible and considering all video touchpoints throughout the day.”

GSTV OOH Measurement Methodology

For this next step in OOH measurement, Comscore will provide network level reach, frequency and impressions by demo and market for GSTV’s 26,000 locations, Sherman explained. “So basically the foundational planning metrics for agencies,” he noted. In addition to the full footprint, the data can also be broken down by market area and by the classic demographic breaks.

“The measurement will be comprised from a number of different data inputs. One data input will be census level transaction data so we have a precise view of each and every transaction that occurs. We know when somebody is in front of the screen, seeing the ad or a piece of content. That is a foundational piece of data. Layered on top of that is mobile device data and from that data you can get demographic information,” he stated and added, “Also we will be doing a national survey to calibrate everything to make sure the demos align.”

All of data is part of a planning tool for agencies so further datasets can be merged into it to obtain a full consumer journey. Initially it will answer the basic questions of reach, frequency and the demos but, “going forward, Comscore will integrate us into their various other tools, plan metrics, for example. So you will able to combine the GSTV data with data for various digital properties such as mobile apps and websites so advertisers can understand what is the incremental reach in digital,” he shared, enabling advertisers to better understand overlap and reach.

“Going forward even beyond that,” Sherman continued, “As Comscore builds a holistic cross media planning tool, we will be able to do that same sort of thing with TV networks or CTV networks. What will be through the singular view of GSTV will ultimately be cross platform views of GSTV as it intersects with other media properties.”

GSTV Future

GSTV is poised to enter the cross platform marketplace at a time of changing consumer preferences which, as Sherman noted, offers the company a rich opportunity for growth. “There are two trends driving opportunities,” he began, “One, the decline of linear television and the rise of streaming and two, increasing concerns about consumer privacy.” For GSTV, he explained, “As linear TV ratings decline, ad supported streaming isn’t growing fast enough to make up the difference in ad inventory. This is pushing down supply of video inventory pushing prices up. Marketers are frustrated and paying more for less, offering a perfect opportunity for GSTV as a real alternative for advertisers.”

With privacy, 84% of Americans are worried about what advertisers know about them, he posited that, “Digital is losing its superpower. Digital advertising is going to shift more to contextual advertising.” For GSTV, knowing what the consumer is doing at the time of the ad exposure and what they are buying, can offer advertisers a more accurate picture of consumer intent without having to collect any sensitive personal data.

“I think we are seeing a convergence of all different types of media,” Sherman predicted, “I think we will see digital out of home become a much more important part of the media mix particularly as video starts to fragment.” As far as GSTV is concerned, the implementation of this cross platform capability, currently slated for late 2021, will place it in the sweet spot for advertisers. “It is foundational. It is table stakes for any media platform. But just as important and even more important, are business outcomes. We’ve spent the past few years really focused on helping our clients measure actual business impact. We’ve seen that our platform is really effective in driving those outcomes,” he concluded.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

 

 

Everything You Wanted to Know About Esports. An Interview with Zach Oscar

Zach Oscar, Esports and Gaming Consultant, his esports teeth in 2018 writing for MediaPost on the Gaming/Esports industries and, at the same time, working for MRI-Simmons on their esports/gaming data offering. That combination enabled him to explore both the news and the measurement side of that business. 

He has also presented, “Video Gaming and Esports; A Clarification,” to companies such as AMC Networks, Comscore, and Sinclair Broadcasting to help them keep up to date on this fast-moving and confusing landscape. Most recently he has been working with Simulmedia as they enter the in-game advertising space. He has presented an industry overview of advertising in esports and gaming at a recent Secret Society meeting which is a gathering of advanced TV executives. 

Charlene Weisler: How do you define esports?

Zach Oscar: Esports refers specifically to professional, organized, regulated, sponsored multiplayer video game competition. So why is there so much confusion? Games like Fortnite make people think that anyone who plays Fortnite plays esports. Unless you’re playing for a prize, in a regulated professional environment against other professionals, you’re not in esports, you’re a gamer. 

Weisler: We talk about esports and gaming as the same thing, but there are obviously differences. Can you go into the differences and similarities?

Oscar: Both esports and gaming are about video games. Esports exists within the broader gaming ecosystem. However, while all esports are video games, not all video games are esports. For example, some of the world's most popular game lines like Skyrim, Animal Crossing, and God of War are not esports capable, meaning they don't have a competitive angle through which multiplayer professional teams could compete for prizes and the championship titles.

Weisler: How does esports compare with traditional sports? 

Oscar: In some respects they are similar. Esports senior management have deliberately talked about how they parallel to the traditional sports world i.e. a developmental/high school equivalent, a minor league system, a major league system, and then a championship. 

But there are differences. Esports are growing faster in the 18-34 year old category than almost any other sport except the NFL and NBA. The viewing experience between the two are very different. If you're watching a football game, talking with friends or others about it requires you to either have friends in person, on the phone, or message through a third party app not tied directly to the sports broadcast. Places to watch esports like Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming all have chat capabilities integrated into the platform, and community engagement during these games is massive. People comment on gameplay, send funny memes, put in specific codes during the broadcast to try to enter to win prizes, it's a very unique experience. 

However, the most crucial difference is ownership. In basketball, for example, no one owns the sport. The NBA is the league operation which regulates the game. Very rarely are any changes made. In esports, the publishers and developers who create these games are often the owners of the leagues in which they are played, too. The games change ALL the time. New characters, weapons, abilities, etc. can have a fundamental impact on the gameplay. So not only do they regulate the play, but they also set the terms of the play itself.

Advertisers can work with publishers to find ways to get into the games themselves in an authentic and player-focused way. League of Legends, for example, has recently announced a few partners for its in-game banner advertising which will only be visible to people watching the esports competition online, not to the actual athletes playing the game. Mastercard is one of the first to get on this wave. 

Weisler: How have esports evolved over the past 3 years?

Oscar: People say that esports are still not mainstream but esports' presence has been creeping up for many years. Since 2016, competitions like the ESL Pro Counter Strike championship have been filling up massive arenas like the Barclays, and acquiring major, almost unthinkable partnerships/sponsorships from big name brands over the past year alone. For example, Louis Vuitton, BMW, Gucci, and other unexpected advertisers have entered the esports scene. 

Also, games like Fortnite and Call of Duty Warzone (Call of Duty's Fortnite equivalent) have become so popular as video games, that by extension of their interest in the game itself people are watching competitive esports. So many more people are gamers today and some of those people then get into esports. 

Another trend is the experimental expansion of esports. Activision Blizzard, creators of Overwatch and Call of Duty, have begun attempting to create local team franchises based in the US and abroad to foster a traditional sports like following. Because of this, too, there is more planned esports specific venue building and therefore opportunity for regional sports networks to air competitions. Plus, esports have acted as a substitute for traditional sports in lieu of COVID-19; some professional athletes have held their competitions virtually, for fun, like NASCAR's iRacing virtual competition that took place earlier this year in lieu of normal races. 

Weisler: Has the pandemic caused any change in the esports model?

Oscar: With the pandemic halting in-person competition until recently, there was a lot of hype around the ease with which esports would be able to continue onwards totally online. There's definitely merit to that idea - the Call of Duty League championships, which took place just this past Sunday broke their peak viewership on YouTube for any of their other esports competitions at 331,000 viewers on the platform - the previous peak was around 200k for the league. TEGNA, the local TV station conglomerate in Texas, partnered with local esports teams Houston Outlaws and Dallas FUEL to put on competitions over three weeks and create a docuseries that ran on weekends. Also, sponsorships have continued to pour in to esports since there's scarce opportunity in other postponed sports, with major brands like Nike announcing just this past week a streetwear sneaker deal with the League of Legends 2020 World Championships. 

Additionally, without that sports programming, ESPN and other sports networks have started showing more esports competitions live. However, it's not all roses for the esports world. A common misconception is that esports is perfectly healthy when it is entirely online. As I mentioned earlier, esports wants to be viewed in the same light as traditional sports by marketers (except with an even younger audience), including in-person audience opportunity. Ticket sales, merch sales, visual sponsorships are all big parts of the esports revenue, which accounted for approximately $100 million worldwide in 2019.

Weisler: Tell me about the demos for esports.

Oscar: According to MRI-Simmons' latest report on esports fans, around 47 million Americans are esports fans, which consists mainly of 18-34 year old millennials, who make more than the national average income, which is around 60k. Esports fans skew male, as is to be expected, by a roughly 60-40 split. However, we still need more data and insights into esports fans under 18 years old, since it is burgeoning for younger people. Comscore has been working with Twitch to get more viewership data and put it in context with cross-media viewership data, and YouGov has collected sentiment data on activations within esports, but we’re still waiting to see the bulk of all that. According to Nielsen and Riot Games, the League of Legends North American tournament series is the third most popular league for adults 18-34 behind the NFL and NBA, but the gap is noticeable (around 2.5m for NFL, 470k for NBA, and 123k for League of Legends). If you included people under 18, I bet these numbers would be even closer together. 

Weisler: Where do you see esports 2-3 years from now?

Oscar: According to many projections, esports is set to grow to about $2bn in worldwide revenue, with a CAGR of 23%. I am not sure how that will play out, but viewership will continue to grow as more and more people start to use platforms like Twitch and YouTube for their m
ainstream entertainment. Esports is an integral part of that. Currently, around 500M people worldwide watch esports and that is projected to grow to around 650M in 2023, according to gaming/esports research firm NewZoo. It's hard to know how reliable all these projections are, especially since esports is such a broad bucket of interests, but if history has taught us anything it's that esports continues to draw more viewers over the years.  

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

Addressable’s Measurement Conundrum. An Interview with Comscore’s Prasad Jogulkar

Earlier in August, Mitch Oscar, USIM's advanced TV strategist, assembled and hosted a panel on addressable advertising for BIA which brought together Comscore's Prasad Joglekar, AMC's Tom Ziangas, Carat's T.S. Kelly and Comcast's Larry Allen to discuss the state of the format.

Following the panel, I interviewed individual panelists to delve further into the discussion, especially as how it will impact linear and remnant inventory measurement. 

For Prasad Jogulkar, GM, TV and Cross Platform Products, Comscore, Addressable TV advertising can mean different things based on who you ask, so he defined it for our discussion as, “Addressable TV advertising is the idea of replacing ads, in a live broadcast content or the VOD/DVR version of such content, such that each viewer of the stream could get a different, tailored advertisement.”

Charlene Weisler: I am interested in knowing your overall view of addressable and whether it has changed or evolved over the past few months.

Prasad Jogulkar: Addressable advertising has long held a promise that each impression in a piece of content is individually tailored to the audience watching it thereby providing maximum value to the advertiser and minimum disruption to the consumer. A part of this promise has been a reality with operators like Dish, DirecTV and Altice who are all running profitable addressable businesses on their local 2 minutes. However, the expansion of these capabilities to national cable and broadcast networks – like Viacom, NBCU etc. has been limited for a variety of technical and contractual reasons. 

Over the last 12 months or so – even before the pandemic – several advances happened. First, with the launch and rapid scaling of various DTC services like Peacock, HBO Max and Disney+, networks have video distribution platforms that are, at least notionally, fully digital and addressable and owned directly by them. Second, various CTV providers have announced addressable programs, though many are very much in their infancies. This is again an offering directed at networks. Third, while legacy MVPDs continue to lose subscribers, they have lost far fewer addressable homes. Finally, and perhaps because of the first three developments, many operators and networks have either completed or advanced carriage dialogs that include addressable enablement and delivery. 

All this has generated a renewed interest in the monetization potential of addressable at national scale. And to properly monetize inventory the marketplace needs requires accurate, trusted, fairly priced and conflict-of-interest-free measurement, which Comscore is striving to provide to all participants.

Weisler: The question of measurement looms large, especially in how we treat remnant inventory. 

Jogulkar: It does indeed. In the legacy panel-based measurement systems, overnight programming on many cable networks, will have no rating. A large MVPD – say with 20% of the market – will also have a zero coverage-rating (i.e. rating on the MVPD’s footprint) on a late-night daypart on even a mid-size network. And if you are a station owner in a smaller market, broad zero ratings from panels are a fact of life. A direct effect of this is that ad-inventory in these instances will also get a “0” rating. 

In these instances, are we to believe that not a single soul is watching? Of course not. Rather, it is that the panel-instrument used to measure is not sensitive enough to pick up the signal. How is an ad-buyer to justify paying non-zero dollars for a “0” metric? How can a carriage deal ever fairly value a network that has multiple asterisks? It is because of this conundrum that smaller networks get labeled as “long tail networks” and overnight dayparts become “remnant”. 

From a network’s perspective, units that are low risk to enable for addressable test are the ones with zero or low ratings. Increasing the yield on these is a great business idea. Comscore’s longstanding and pioneering use of census set-top-box based ratings measurement has brought transparency and insight to this content. MVPDs have long used their view of Comscore’s data to negotiate the appropriate carriage fee for networks big and small, equalizing them on a cost-per-second-viewed basis. Networks, local stations and MVPD ad-sales teams are also using this better data to demonstrate value and generate incremental sales.

Weisler: Same too, measurement of addressable in linear TV. 

Jogulkar: Absolutely true. When a spot is made addressable, some homes watching that spot will be targeted for addressable delivery in that instant. But the majority is not. On average, ~30% of the impressions in a spot will be targeted. So, ~70% of impressions are not targeted. This phenomenon is generally true for all addressable spots. 

Comscore calls these 30% of homes as “Addressed Homes” and the impressions, naturally, as “Addressable Impressions”. The other 70% of homes not targeted in that instant are called “Under Addressed” homes and those impressions “Under Addressable”. The “Under” comes from the fact that in many delivery systems, the Addressable creative is quite literally overwriting the linear impression. 

The Under Addressed impressions are seen as suspect or remnant. After all, if they were valuable, someone would have bought them addressably. The advertiser who bought the linear spot and is only getting the Under Addressed impressions, will naturally feel that they are being sold a broken product. Absent some convincing information, the only way to account for this is to place a very low bid on this Under Addressed spot. 

This value-loss problem is very real. It can only be solved by decorating the Addressed and Under Addressed impressions with useful, actionable audience attributes, across all operators and insertion platforms. Age and Gender is not an actionable audience. After all, if the Addressed Impressions took away all the 25 year olds and left behind all the 54 year olds in a spot, it would still be a valid A25-54 spot. Would a buyer consider that a fair A25-54 deal?  This is a measurement and transparency problem that Comscore is ahead in the marketplace with our thinking and solutions. 

Weisler: What do you envision as the best methodology to measure addressable, panel, hybrid or …?

Jogulkar: The lifecycle of an addressable campaign goes something like this: The advertiser or agency creates a list of household IDs (or device IDs) that represent the audience of interest. This list is matched to various operator or distribution footprints. Then the addressable impressions are delivered to only those households in that list. Typically, at the end of the campaign households that saw impressions are matched up to next-period sales to do some attribution.

This entire workflow is anchored around addressing each of millions of households that are of interest – from targeting, to impression delivery to attribution. It’s a little naïve to believe that anything other than census-scale measurement will provide accurate and trusted measurement for these workflows. 

Further, the things that make Addressable TV interesting - the "breaking" of the live spot, the delivery of multiple advertisements within the same unit etc. - are precisely the things that make it impossible to measure with a panel, or as a traditional age-gender rating as we discussed earlier. Trying to shove what is inherently an impression-based buy into a spot-based measurement scheme doesn't work. There’s very limited value panels bring to this equation.

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

Jogulkar: The one additional one that I haven’t mentioned earlier is this: For national addressability, a 30-sec unit must be individually enabled in 3-5 different operator and distribution platforms. Each operator's addressable insertion, pacing and reporting stack is unique. It is a hard and laborious process to measure each platform individually, and then combine the numbers to create a true national view.

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

Jogulkar: I think the whole space will have evolved quite substantially. We’ll see many pilots and beta programs being launched and their success or failure will be very instructive to all the players in the marketplace. Some of the debates about panel vs. census vs. hybrid are like religion; you can never decisively convince a non-believer. Those will continue. Economics of national addressable – for instance what is the price for the Addressed audience vs. the Under Addressed Audience – will start to be concrete and will be benchmarked.