Research and fraud: As Data Science is increasingly adopted in
media companies, research departments, especially in those areas
dedicated to quality research such as focus groups, are feeling the
pinch. Not only can pure data focus attention and resources on real time
reporting, the margin of error in its output can be minimized with
protocols such as blockchain. The two seemingly different but actually
related topics of quality research and ad fraud were discussed by Paul Donato, CRO, the ARF at SXSW:
Charlene Weisler: Is there room for quality research in this age of data driven decisions?
Paul Donato: Quality and quantitative research lie
on two different dimensions. Qualitative and quantitative are two ends
of a single dimension, and both are changing dramatically.
The quality of the research is essential for both qualitative and
quantitative. Social listening is electronic, real time, continuous and
benefits from very large samples. Sentiment algorithms have improved
dramatically. Open source APIs for natural language and sentiment and
the abundance of data on the social networks have changed qualitative in
a way believed to have impacted the last presidential election.
Quantitative data is now drawn from online behaviors, loyalty cards
and other sources of consumer and media data. However, for many
applications, panels and surveys are still needed for modeling holes in
the data and demographics of the digital signals. Because, digital data
often lacks the depth of what we can collect in surveys, the quality of
the models that fill in that data is essential. There is so much data
available, with so little measure of accuracy. Therefore, methods of
assessing quality are more important than ever.
Weisler: Will fraud ever go away and if not, can we tamp it down?
Donato: Possibly. There are many who are testing
blockchain as an immutable ledger of the digital supply chain that can
eliminate most of the fraud. Maybe, the major digital companies are
working on a device and person’s identity with the possibility of a
universal ID after there are no cookies. However, this is looking out 3
to 5 years.
Today, many things are happening to tamp down fraud. Digital is here
to stay, so advertisers are taking control of their digital campaigns.
Consortiums such as TAG required registrations that support safe and
valid traffic. Standards such as those set by the MRC have supported
independent firms that specialize in identifying invalid traffic.
Viewability standards will help tamp down fraud. Advertising will find a
way, so it is a matter of time before fraud is less important than most
other challenges in marketing.
What is the future of television? How has the media landscape changed? Dr. Horst Stipp is the SVP Strategic Insights & Innovation and a 40 year veteran of NBC. His work spans all strategic areas of research including sales research, social research and innovative insights for all the NBC Universal properties. I interviewed Horst in his office and we discussed a range of subjects including the past and future trends of research, DVRs, his predictions, International research and CTAM. There are 7 videos in the interview:
Video Length (in minutes)
Intro and STB Data (4:08)
Changes in Research and T.A.M.I. (6:50)
DVRs (4:02)
Challenges and Research Quality (7:35)
International (2:28)
CTAM (2:10)
Predictions (2:51)
Charlene Weisler interviews Horst Stipp, SVP strategic Insights and Innovation, NBC. Horst discusses his background, his current job responsibilites and the role of set top box data in research.
Charlene Weisler interviews Horst Stipp, SVP strategic Insights and Innovation, NBC. Horst discusses his how research has changed over the past 5 years and a new metric NBC has developed to meet the challenges of measurement today.
Charlene Weisler interviews Horst Stipp, SVP strategic Insights and Innovation, NBC. Horst discusses DVRs - trends, measurement and impact.
Charlene Weisler interviews Horst Stipp, SVP strategic Insights and Innovation, NBC. Horst discusses challenges in Research today and the importance of research quality.
Charlene Weisler interviews Horst Stipp, SVP strategic Insights and Innovation, NBC. Horst discusses his work in International research.
CW:
Horst, you are very involved in CTAM. You
were the recent co-chair of the CTAM Research Planning committee. Can you tell
us about your work with CTAM and the value that CTAM brings to your company?
HS:
When you first asked me about my history here at NBC, I recall those days when
NBC was just a television network and now our president Jeff Zucker is on
record as saying that the majority of our profits come from our cable
properties. So our cable properties are not only incredibly important, they are
also of growing importance. And for me personally it has been exciting to get
involved in this more varied world of television and looking at the network and
what that does and also all the different cable networks, their niches, their
branding, their audiences. I’ve been involved in segmentation studies for the
various networks and it has been fascinating. CTAM deals with all of these
issues and at CTAM you meet people dealing with exactly these same issues. At the research conference there is a great
sharing of very interesting information. It was very exciting to put the
program together and work with Colleen Fahey-Rush on the recent Research
Conference. We were very happy with the outcome. We were very proud of the
program. The reason why I even agreed to do the work – and believe me it is
more work than you think as a co-chair – was because I’ve been to several of
the CTAM Research conferences and have always found them to be really good,
really interesting and really valuable. It’s the conference itself, it’s the
program, the information you get and it’s also the networking sharing of
information is informative.
Charlene Weisler interviews Horst Stipp, SVP strategic Insights and Innovation, NBC. Horst discusses his work with CTAM.
CW:
You are in a very unique position in the
industry because you work for a company that has a broadcast network, a range
of cable networks and a very strong off-platform. How would you say that the
research community and the research that you do has changed in the past 5 to 10
years?
HS:
There are a lot of issues. One is of course the currency; the need to get more
data on the smaller networks as well as to get measurement of the DVR, the time
shifted viewing and finally of online viewing. That’s been a major issue in those
last years. The movement of a plain old fashion television exposure currency to
cross media and online measurement and time shifted measurement. You may have
heard about NBC’s creation, T.A.M.I. – the total audience measurement index –
which is an attempt to describe the total reach of a television program on all
these new platforms in the absence of a true cross media, cross platform
measurement tool which we don’t have yet. So that’s the ad exposure issue.
Secondly, I think there has been a move towards more sales research at all the
networks certainly at NBC. Part of that has been our embrace of I.A.G.
(measures, among other things, in-program product placement) in the early
stages. I think we were the first network to actually use IAG data as a
secondary guarantee for some of our clients. So it was establishing working
with new measures. We did, at the time, a very innovative study on galvanic
skin responses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_skin_response)
and eye tracking measures to establish that when people see commercials that
they time shifted and fast forwarded. That they still get a lot of information
even though they are watching fast forward because they are very much focused
on the screen and apparently the brain is hard wired to make sense out of what
is in front of you even though its in fast forward. So that was an interesting
new methodology. And there is an increased demand for cross media research
simply to demonstrate and establish if you advertise across platform that you
get more bang for your buck….
CW:
Where do you see the biggest challenges
to your job in Research coming from in the next 5 years?
HS:
I think Research in general has two issues. One is, I think, a very old one and
one is maybe a little more recent. The older one is to sell the research to
management. Make it useful, show that it is useful, demonstrate its usefulness,
provide the kind of information that is really needed but on the other hand not
to oversell it either. And of course that is a very fine balance and sometimes
we tend to oversell it a little as researchers because we are very passionate
about the data. The shortcomings are that people don’t always know what they
want or don’t always tell you the truth. Respondents are notoriously bad at
telling you about the future such as what kind of programs would you really
like to see that you currently don’t find on tv. The typical answer is more of
my favorite programs right now. I think they are also very bad at predicting
the adoption of certain technologies. That has always been an issue. The new
issue that has come up is that because of the quickening pace of technology and
of changes in media and an increased demand for the kind of question that you
just asked which is “What’s going to happen? How is this going to develop?”….
Charlene Weisler interviews Horst Stipp, SVP strategic Insights and Innovation, NBC. Horst provides his predictions for the industry in the next 5 years.
Research and fraud: As Data Science is increasingly adopted in
media companies, research departments, especially in those areas
dedicated to quality research such as focus groups, are feeling the
pinch. Not only can pure data focus attention and resources on real time
reporting, the margin of error in its output can be minimized with
protocols such as blockchain. The two seemingly different but actually
related topics of quality research and ad fraud were discussed by Paul Donato, CRO, the ARF at SXSW:
