Data company Kantar announced Project Moonshot, an ad industry initiative that establishes direct data integrations with ad platforms to asset the impact of advertising on brands and sales. 

Project Moonshot is establishing integrations with Google, Pandora and game platform Anzu and cookie-less measurement partnership with Dish, Pinterest, Roku, Snap, Spotify and Twitter. Kantar aims to represent 95% of global digital ad spend by integrating 250 publishers on the platform by the end of 2021.

”As digital grows, it’s even more important that publishers can defend their ad revenues with an independent view of performance for advertisers,” said Jane Olstler, Kantar’s global leader for advertising effectiveness. "The gradual removal of third-party cookies from the digital landscape means that methods of online ad effectiveness tracking need to evolve, in a privacy-compliant way. We know that advertisers would ideally like cross-publisher ad effectiveness measurement, and Kantar’s Project Moonshot is making giant steps in that direction."

The goals of Project Moonshot are to establish a privacy-compliant data and tech platform as the industry moves from cookies to publisher integrations, independent ad effectiveness measurement of individual publishers and media companies, and ad effectiveness measurement across all publishers within a media plan, including polling solutions for walled gardens.

“Our direct partnership with Kantar is focused on making TV ads more targeted and measurable,” said Gaurav Shirole, director, ad measurement at Roku. “As we enter the streaming decade, platforms like OneView built on a consumer connection are designed to best help advertisers shift spend to streaming.”

Kantar’s research indicates that 80% of marketers trust third party measurement, compared to just over 40% who trust data from individual publisher or media platforms. With third-party cookie disappearing, Kantar has developed new ways to assess effectiveness, using a combination of methodologies including direct integrations and extensively validated probabilistic measurement.

“Measurement is going through a revolution and with ever increasing investment in digital channels, we need to be prepared for the change that the end of cookie data is going to bring,” said Nick Lawson, Global CEO, at buying agency MediaCom. “Kantar’s Project Moonshot initiative, and its work with publishers, ensures that we can continue to plan smarter and rely on data to deliver insights into consumer behavior. Having a consistent method of measuring brand effectiveness across digital platforms, and being able to link our messages to sales and consumer impact as part of the bigger picture, is exactly what MediaCom, and indeed the entire industry, needs.”

"In recent weeks, consumers have accelerated a change that was underway in the streaming world. CTV/OTT has become THE universal form of media consumption and more consumers are embracing ad-supported streaming TV options." -John Vilade, head of sales, Premion

With the nation’s attention turned to the reopening, advertisers are considering how quickly to pivot their messaging and determining the right media mix to prepare for the restart. They also have to shift to a local marketing approach in response to the phased state-by-state reopening for retail stores, restaurants and other businesses. To underscore that notion, a recent IAB study found that more than a third of advertisers are already adjusting their in-market tactics to increase audience and connected TV (CTV)/ OTT device targeting. With local campaigns reigning over national ad buys, the combination of OTT and local linear is proving to be invaluable for advertisers to execute locally for the comeback.

In recent weeks, consumers have accelerated a change that was underway in the streaming world. CTV/OTT has become THE universal form of media consumption and more consumers are embracing ad-supported streaming TV options. An IAS ‘Streaming Wars’ report finds that nearly nine in 10 consumers have access to a CTV device; 76% are willing to see ads in exchange for watching free streaming video, and 55% plan to watch free video streaming services in the next 12 months. At the same time, more viewers are tuning in to their local newscasts as the trusted news source and those newscasts are also attracting a younger audience, per TVB’s analysis.

As consumers have grown accustomed to contactless, remote and digital behaviors in their day-to-day lives, brand messages will be important to convey how businesses are adopting new safety practices as they reopen. According to The Harris Poll Covid-19 tracker, pent-up demand is building ‘revenge spending’ among consumers who are planning for major purchases once things return to a semi-normal state, albeit with a focus on safety across the customer journey. A CivicScience study finds that half of consumers are ready to resume life and prefer not to see ads that talk about sheltering in place. As consumers emerge from being home-bound, they are also more receptive to entertaining and uplifting messages. As such, brands that tap into the resiliency of local communities with campaigns that are engaging, informative and hopeful will resonate with their audiences.

Here are three advertiser priorities as we enter the reopening phase:

Prioritize Addressable Advertising and Geotargeting

Advertisers across industry categories will need to take a localized approach by aligning local spot buys with the regional reopening timeframes. As such, geotargeting and dynamic creative are ever more important. From a linear perspective, communities and audience identities that have been formed around TV markets remain incredibly relevant to businesses and consumers. Furthermore, as national advertisers shift their focus to local campaigns, they’re seeking more granular insights at a national to local level to be able personalize, localize and deliver more relevant ads to reach their desired audiences with on-brand messaging.

Addressable OTT enables advertisers to target local audiences at scale. They can target by designated market area (DMA), states, zip codes and combine this geo-targeting with interest categories. With addressable targeting, viewer data is captured and analyzed into audience segments, such as auto intenders, and applied to campaigns. Brands also need to adapt and tailor their messages to communicate how they’re serving their local customers differently. With dynamic ad insertions in CTV, advertisers can easily swap out creative to deliver a personalized and relevant advertising experience.

Optimizing OTT and Local TV

Advertisers that leverage ad-supported OTT to complement linear as a ‘reach extension’ are able to capture shifting audiences by engaging with viewers that they wouldn’t reach with linear alone. As such, it’s important for advertisers to compare OTT and linear TV usage by asking: Where are you finding viewers exclusively on OTT? Without OTT in the mix, advertisers are potentially missing out on a huge local audience segment. The potential for optimizing OTT and linear campaigns is significant. Additionally, advertisers are looking for greater simplicity and scale in planning, buying and measurement, and they’re seeking unified packaged solutions – thus the need for tighter integration and packaging between ad-supported OTT inventory and broadcast TV inventory.

New innovations for managing incremental reach and frequency across OTT and linear are available to deliver more effective results for advertisers. With automated content recognition (ACR) technology embedded in smart TVs, advertisers can now measure the effectiveness of both OTT and linear ad campaigns to allow for better planning of media spend. For instance, access to this data can show an advertiser whether they’ve gained a higher percentage of incremental OTT reach that they perhaps would have missed on linear to prove the efficacy and ROI of their campaigns. Essentially, combining OTT and linear TV inventory can drive increased business outcomes for advertisers by extending both reach and engagement.

Pay Attention to Attribution

As consumer behaviors evolve with the reopening, brands will need to stay laser focused on their marketing spend effectiveness. While our industry is still working towards delivering unified measurement, the value of CTV / OTT advertising for driving audience engagement is undeniable – given the non-skippable ad formats, reduced ad loads, industry-leading completion rates and targetability. Moreover, OTT attribution capabilities can prove to advertisers whether their campaign performance drove business outcomes.

During the lockdown with stores temporarily closed, measuring website attribution was the priority. With the reopening, advertisers will resume the need to track footfall traffic again. Moreover, we can expect to see more industry innovation that can deliver greater specificity in the return in marketing investment, specifically with closed loop attribution and the ability to measure offline purchasing behaviors.

Our world will look and feel differently as many businesses will have to adapt and reimagine themselves for the reopening. To that end, brands and agencies that take a ‘flight to quality’ approach to working with proven, premium, trusted partners are well positioned to make smart, informed media buying decisions to reach their desired local audiences for a new era. Like the Dorothy awakening in ‘The Wizard of Oz’, in our comeback, we’ve found OTT to be our new friend in reaching critical mass and there’s no place like home – akin to the familiarity of local.

Premion, part of Tegna, is the leading premium CTV/OTT advertising platform for regional and local advertisers.

TVSquared and Extreme Reach said they formed a partnership that will measure the effectiveness of commercials that run in all content served via set-top video-on-demand and over-the-top streaming services.

Their new product, TVSquared AdVantage claims to simplify attribution for marketers by tracking ad performance at the household level and at scale in both linear and digital TV content.

“Brands need a single solution to find the optimal mix of linear and OTT,” said Jo Kinsella, CRO and executive VP at TVSquared. “In an increasingly growing, yet fragmented TV ecosystem, this is how advertisers test and learn, and they need performance metrics that can compare linear and digital TV all in a single platform. Extreme Reach makes this possible in Advantage because of the scale and breadth of creative assets that are managed and distributed through AdBridge.”

On a daily basis, 2,500 creative assets are uploaded to Extreme Reach’s AdBridge asset management platform. The platform, which integrates ad serving, linear TV distribution, OTT delivering and talent and rights management, will also tag ads, allowing marketers to tie ad exposure to business outcomes.

“Through this exciting integration with TVSquared, we are enabling brands to capture data in the way they require to make appropriate business decisions,” said James Shears, VP. advanced advertising at Extreme Reach. “Attribution data is the holy grail for performance-focused brands who are looking to combine the scale of linear TV with the precision of digital campaigns. In connecting the fragmented media landscape, we help brands unlock the true power of their creative.”

One of the first companies to use the new system from TVSquared and Extreme Reach is Talkspace, one of the direct-to-consumer companies ramping up TV spending.

“Linear and digital TV are powerful activation channels for Talkspace, providing performance, scale and house-hold level precision,” said Mary Rykaczewski, director of paid acquisition for Talkspace. “Through this partnership, we have a single, go-to-market solution for tagging and attributing all of our TV creatives. The analytics offer game-changing insights on reach, frequency and performance by day, daypart, network, program, genre and creative across linear and digital TV.”

The television industry has been clamoring for a solution on attribution for obvious reasons — cord-cutting and digital have been eating into TV ad budgets, and the industry is looking for sophisticated measurement solutions to understand TV’s impact on return.

It’s why executives from Viacom, Fox, Discovery Communications, Time, ABC, ESPN and many more met in October to discuss the possibility of adding a new measurement metric with the focus on attribution and outcomes. Code named “Thor,” the solution could satiate the cravings TV advertisers are having to tie their commercials to something they have long sought — namely, proof their six-, 15-, 30- and 60-second ads result in tangible purchases. The need for better measurement for TV is evident.

Related: Networks Plan Q1 Test of Data Plus Math Ad Attribution Platform

Unlike its digital counterparts, TV can be notoriously challenging to measure, but it’s also one of the most powerful channels in the marketing toolbox. TV advertising can help reach a massive amount of people — quickly — but proper measurement has been a tough nut to crack.

Making a Complex Task Possible
TV has become part of a holistic experience deeply connected to digital activities. And marketers have tried to keep up by adapting the formats we use. There is no longer a straight line from long form DRTV to 1-800 numbers or from vanity URLs to purchase. It’s all a part of a more complex journey, and it should be measured as such.

While the ways that we watch and advertise on TV have changed, its dominance of budgets has not. With so much of the marketing budget at stake, accurate return on investment isn’t just a nice piece of the pie, it should be your No. 1 measurement priority. This is where TV attribution comes into play.

Effective TV attribution requires a data science-driven approach instead of assumptions, intuition and other questionable correlations that could be used to describe the “good enough” measurement techniques of the past. An analytically robust approach to TV attribution helps marketers measure the impact of TV and return on investment. It approaches performance TV measurement differently by applying analytics to TV data and uncovering what’s truly working and why. It calculates how well you’re hitting your business objectives, extracts value from your current data and, perhaps most importantly, definitively proves ROI.

As with all measurement plans, successfully implementing these metrics depends on organizational readiness in three primary areas: data, technology and cultural framework. TV attribution is no exception. Whether you’re handling the analytics in-house or partnering with a solution provider, you’ll need to be prepared to ensure successful implementation. To help you do this, here are three steps to get started.

Define Your Business Goals
TV attribution starts with a clear understanding of what you’re trying to measure and how you want to use that information. A robust measurement practice answers specific and targeted business questions such as:

■ What is my baseline without TV?
■ What is my TV ROI?
■ Where should I spend my next dollar to maximize TV return?
■ What stations, programs and/or creative are most effective?
■ What tactics will get me more scale?
■ How can I get conclusive results for testing with these programs or spots?
■ How does TV influence other channels in my media mix?

Answering these questions will help map the appropriate KPIs needed to ensure everyone is on the same page with what’s being measured and why.

Collect and Prepare Your Data
A necessary component to get up and running with TV attribution is getting access to the right data sets.

Data ownership and governance continues to be a huge issue for marketers. Historical data may be paramount for analysis, but it’s found within multiple silos such as your technology partners and agencies and is spread across multiple systems of record. You need to make sure there is a centralized source of marketing data that partners can feed into — with identified owners — that can be tasked with being accountable for the data. This way, you can ensure the data is supporting the organization’s growth as transitions are made, while also facilitating future analysis.

Having access and ownership of the data gives marketers the ability and control to receive the most up-to-date insights. To enable accurate modeling, I’d recommend having two years of historical data in place to ensure you’re capturing seasonality and dynamic patterns of consumer behavior. A year or more of historical data allows for advanced machine learning algorithms to uncover the most impactful information.

Analyze for Trends and Insights
With your data collected and prepared, you can go beyond basic statistical analysis to find real answers. Depending on your business objectives, you may focus on long-term baselines or short-term impacts. A well-planned approach will help with both.

Once you identify the trends and impacts, the benefits of TV attribution are undeniable and include insights on the best length of the ad, categories or programming changes to cut back on waste and find new customers and evaluate what time of day works best.

Attribution continues to give advertisers and marketers frustrations, but it is critical for the industry to achieve ROI. TV attribution provides marketing organizations with a powerful way to make effective decisions and get the best return possible for TV media spend — and a solution can be implemented in as fast as a couple of weeks. TV marketers shouldn’t have to settle for “good enough,” and with these steps and paths crossed, you’ll be able to gain fast, accurate, actionable insights designed to drive business impact.

Brian Baumgart is co-founder and CEO of Conversion Logic, a cloud-based marketing analytics platform.