Hot Takes: The Hottest Trends In Measurement
Measurement seems to be the word on everyone’s lips these days. Everyone who has any part of the greater media industry anyway.
It’s not just Nielsen getting dinged from all sides or the death of cookies. It’s the realization that so long as consumer privacy is kept front and center, there’s just so much more the industry can do with the data it collects.
We asked our Thought Leaders Circle members for their thoughts on some of the key trends they’re seeing around measurement right now.
Lance Neuhauser, President, Commercial at Mediaocean (be sure to check out their Big Picture Event that I’ll be MC’ing next week) was focused on convergence and the move away from a one-size-fits-all response.
There's no doubt that the rapid convergence of TV and video is causing ripple effects across the media landscape. We're seeing it in all aspects of planning, buying, creative, and measurement. But there's no one-size-fits-all answer. Every marketer needs to consider the audiences, channels, messages, and currencies that are most important to driving business outcomes. From a Mediaocean perspective, we're focused on supporting all modes of buying, selling, serving, and measuring so that any brand or agency can connect the dots and get better results.
Joe Melaragno, Head of Platform Sales & Agency Development, Samsung Ads had some thoughts about frequency capping.
One of the largest asks from brands right now is being able to control frequency and I think we’re going to continue to see that over the next few years. Frequency issues arise in two ways, one is when you sit down to watch your favorite streaming service and in a single session, you see the same ad over and over and over again. It’s more crucial now than ever to make sure you’re not oversaturating your audience and we believe this first problem can be solved relatively simply in a media owner’s ad server. The second issue is more challenging and that is how to manage frequency over a week or a month when a viewer is consuming content in several apps on multiple devices. Finding the right balance is key to achieving brand messaging goals and meeting a campaign’s KPIs. At Samsung Ads, we launched Samsung DSP where we can actually combine all the data we have from linear ad exposure with what a marketer is running in CTV to ensure the optimal frequency across the board.
Meanwhile, Ken Norcross, Senior Director of Data Strategy & Partnerships at VIZIO was all about adapting to shifting consumer viewing behavior.
The openness of the industry to explore, test, and demand new forms of measurement is the most exciting development right now. The long-told adage "as consumer viewing behavior shifts, measurement needs to shift" is finally bearing fruit. We expect that in the future there will be several companies that continue to drive measurement innovation and we are excited that VIZIO's ACR data is helping to fuel that future.
Field Garthwaite, CEO and Co-Founder of IRIS.TV is betting on the rise of contextual signals and greater standardization.
The demand for content transparency on video and CTV inventory is why we’re seeing such an explosion of interest and buying activity using contextual video signals. This week Omnicom announced their standardization initiative centered around Connected TV, the fastest growing sector of the media market. We are proud to be aligned with OMG and the IAB in support of standardizing use of the content object in Open Real Time Bidding (ORTB).
Finally, Justin Fromm, Head of Research at LG Ads is all about the future being multi-currency.
The future of advertising measurement is multi-currency. The TV industry will almost certainly continue to work with Nielsen, given their depth of experience, but it will no longer be constrained by their toolset. While many bemoan what they see as a free for all, what a multi-currency future will finally lead to is true transparency in advertising measurement.
The advances in data science that have been made over the past several years make it possible to connect data across across buyers, sellers, and third party partners providing line of sight to reach, frequency, and business outcomes. With ACR data providing glass-level data, true second-by-second viewership and client-specific business outcomes are finally possible. Transparency of data and analysis will advance measurement to where buyers and sellers truly need it to be.
Our TVREV take
Measurement is definitely evolving and with all the data that is now available to us, there’s really no need for a one-size-fits-all solution, especially given how rapidly consumer’s viewing behavior has been shifting. That’s why looking at alternate data sets like contextualization is so important.
Issues like frequency capping need to be solved—it’s the major complaint consumers have about ad-supported streaming (AVOD.) Some of that will come as a result of more advertisers making use of CTV, but solutions that can help brands solve for that are very much needed, and it seems that smart TV OEMs, whose ACR measurement data gives them access to both linear and streaming viewing, can definitely take the lead here.
