NBCUniversal, which launched an effort to find new ways to measure how many people are watching commercials, is now looking to see what kind of emotional response the ads get and how much ad quality matters.

Kelly Abcarian, executive VP, measurement & Impact, who is leading NBCU’s efforts, said that understanding the quality of advertising creative was important if advertisers want to transact based on the impact of a media campaign.

“While brands spend a ton of time testing before an ad airs, right now, publishers are held accountable for driving results once it does, often only defined as maximizing reach,” Abcarian said in a blog post Tuesday. "But now thanks to new measurement solutions, we believe ad campaign impact can be a shared responsibility.”

Also: NBCU Recognizes More Measurement Companies as Nielsen Alternatives

Abcarian said NBCU is working with Dumbstruck, a company that combines insights from psychology with facial coding and eye tracking to create emotional analytics.

“Already, their creative tools and testing have effectively  elevated messaging for brands. Now, we’re testing and learning with Dumbstruck to further prove the relationship between the audience’s emotional response to a specific ad and its in-market performance—and, by extension, open new pathways to not just understanding creative’s true impact but transacting on it,” Abcarian said. 

Other companies mentioned by Abcarian were System 1, Emoto.AI, Kantar’s Link Ad Test and Dynata’s Ameritest.

“In this era of new currencies, we need multiple trusted yardsticks that can measure ad campaign impact in its entirety—from emotion to content to conversion, and everything in between," Abcarian said. “And by working together, and exploring new ideas, we can develop a new system of creative testing and measurement solutions that scale impact measurement and make it accessible  to all our partners.”  ■

NBCUniversal announced members of its Measurement Innovation Forum, a group aimed at looking at the way media and advertising is measured and creating alternatives to Nielsen, which has monopolized the industry.

Measurement companies are not included in the forum. Separately NBCU had sent out requests for proposals from dozens of measurement companies looking for fresh ideas. About 80 companies participated, including Nielsen.

Nielsen has been under fire since it was discovered that it had undercounted TV viewing during the pandemic.

Advertisers participating in the NBCU forum include Citicorp, Ford, L’Oreal, Rocket Mortgage, Target and Volkswagen.

Agencies include 360i, Active International, Canvas, dentsu, GroupM, Havas, Horizon Media, Magna, OMD, Publicis, RPA and Wieden+Kennedy.

Trade group such as the Ad Council, the Four As, the Association of National Advertisers, the Advertising Research Foundation, the IAB, Open A.P., TVB, VAB and the Media Rating Council are also taking part.

Also Read: VAB Launches Measurement Task Force; NBCU Signs On

“As a global media buyer and seller, as well as a measurement customer, NBCUniversal understands the need for alternative measurement solutions,” said Kelly Abcarian, executive VP for measurement and impact in NBCU’s advertising and partnerships group, in a blog post. “That’s why we’re investing in technology, convening industry experts, and devoting countless resources, all with an ambitious goal in mind: to bring more awareness to every measurement option available and to help the industry create a measurement system that accurately reflects consumer behavior and advertiser impact in this new era.

“NBCU’s complete measurement initiative is designed with commitment in mind: What we learn, the entire industry will learn. Because, more information fuels more innovation. The potential for industrywide innovation makes transparency more important, so that everyone can share in the findings—and the future,” Abcarian said.

Kelly Abcarian, the long-time Nielsen executive, is joining NBCUniversal’s advertising and partnerships division as executive VP, measurement & impact.

Abcarian had been helming Nielsen’s addressable advertising business, which was sold to Roku. 

Nielsen also recently lost another top executive, Scott N. Brown, who was head of its media measurement business.

Also Read: Nielsen Tells Networks it Doesn’t Need Another Audit

At NBCU, she will report to Krishan Bhatia, president and chief business officer for NBCU Advertising & Partnerships. She will work closely with the division’s sales, planning, strategy, partnerships and ad platforms & operating group. 

“Kelly Abcarian's addition to our team represents a step change for our company and the industry, when it comes to the future of cross-platform measurement and data innovation," said Bhatia. "Consumers have established an all-screen future and we’re doubling down on our position to usher in the next era of measurement. Kelly has decades-long measurement and advanced advertising experience, along with deep connections within the media industry and a partnership track record across CTV/OTT platforms.”

Also Read: NBCU Shows Off Ad Tech Capabilities at One21 Event

Before she was head of Nielsen’s advanced video advertising group, she led its global audience measurement product portfolio, developing its total audience product and digital ad ratings for CTV. Before that she was with Oracle, Siebel and Arthur Andersen.

“If you look across the industry, the signals are clear: we must collectively decide to embrace the future that our audiences have created,” said Abcarian. “NBCUniversal is on the cutting-edge of next-generation measurement and targeting. And I’m thrilled to join the expert team behind One Platform and work to provide marketers the resources and techniques they need to fully understand the impact of their investments.”

Planning and executing TV advertising used to be simple, running on the same formula for many years. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we need to adapt to the shifting world we live in. Following years of TV set evolution and advancements in digital marketing, the bar has been raised for what marketers and viewers expect when it comes to advertising on the TV glass. Marketers want rich, attribution-based data to inform their marketing plans, and viewers demand a seamless, custom experience from the moment they power on their devices. 

Marketers continue to spend money on linear TV because that’s still where consumers are spending most of their time. In fact, we spend nearly 30 hours a week watching linear and time-shifted—that’s more than any other media type—which is even more impactful given TV’s powerful scale, reaching 85% of the U.S. population. In recent years, the industry has been a buzz about addressable TV—that is the data, control and targeting of digital advertising applied to the reach and frequency of TV advertising. Advancements in technology are finally at the point where addressable TV at scale is now imminent. But what is addressable TV all about, and what does it require from the very start in order to be successful in the long term?

Digital-Level Data With The Scale Of TV

Addressable TV offers the best of both digital and traditional television. Speed, precision and data-driven targeting are some of digital’s biggest draws for marketers who need to quickly adapt to changing consumer sentiments. Enabled by the rapid adoption of internet-connected devices like smart TVs, now in 54% of US homes, linear advertising can operate with the agility of digital as well as leverage similar reporting capabilities.

Modern advertisers can practice what their predecessors predicted: personalized advertising delivered to specific households (beyond age and gender proxies) instead of catering broadly to entire program audiences. For everyday viewers, this means they could be watching the same live primetime program as their neighbor but see advertisements tailored to their preferences during commercial breaks. For example, an urban dog owner might see an ad for organic puppy chow whereas an expecting couple might see a commercial for diapers. Advertisers benefit from connecting with viewers who are more likely to purchase their products and programmers unlock inventory opportunities by enabling premium ad space to be executed across multiple advertisers. And because commercials reach the right audience with tailored messaging, viewers have a more personalized and satisfying experience. 

A Proven Tech Stack Is Key For Addressable TV

Before reaching the scale of traditional TV, addressable TV must be built on a solid tech stack. A tech stack is simply an alignment of all of the technology components that help an addressable TV platform run smoothly from end-to-end. This includes data management platforms (DMPs) that allow advertisers to select audience segments beyond traditional demos, to TV chipsets that bring addressable software across different TV models and manufacturers, to automatic content recognition (ACR) technology that recognizes when to insert an ad in live programming, to privacy management software that protects viewers.

Once the necessary tech components are in place, a rigorous testing phase follows to guarantee flawless execution. This prevents common addressable issues like blackouts, buffering, overlapping of ads, or unsafe brand placements. We all know how aggravating it can be to wait for an ad to load, and advertisers know that a poorly placed ad can be devastating to brand image. With addressable TV, the ad experience becomes more relevant by connecting audiences with products they care about, even potentially cutting back on the number of ads due to more sophisticated frequency management and, in a perfect world, the creative will be tailored to the viewer’s needs making the advertising experience more valuable and enjoyable. None of this can be accomplished until the technology is proven reliable. 

A general rule of thumb when commercializing an addressable TV platform is to start with a buildable foundation before attempting to scale. A tech stack is ready when it 1) reduces complexity across existing TV workflows, 2) offers a seamless viewing experience and 3) can bring transparency in the TV marketplace.

3 Components of a Successful Addressable Tech Stack:

#1 Reduced Complexity

Addressable TV does not operate in a vacuum, but needs to be integrated within the advertising ecosystem’s existing workflows and technology. In particular, for addressable TV to succeed at scale, buying friction (difficulties associated with actually buying addressable TV inventory) needs to be removed through aggregation of inventory for buyers, ease of using targeting data sets, and the ability to automate campaign operations and performance across multiple distribution platforms.  

Addressable TV should aim to simplify and automate existing workflows rather than create more confusion. No matter how strong the technology, if the decisioning mechanisms used to determine the lineup of dynamic ad insertions are difficult to implement, and cause friction across existing processes, then the offering will be difficult to scale.

With that in mind, a solid tech stack needs to be built from the ground up on open APIs that enable TV networks and players to easily “plug and play” with their current partners across the digital and TV landscape. Rather than reinventing the wheel, a successful addressable platform is interoperable to enable advertisers and programmers to utilize existing third party infrastructure such as DMPs, DSPs, SSPs, ad servers and more. When a platform is not dependent on certain manufacturers, devices, or models, it allows for an open and flexible approach to delivering content across addressable inventory. Whether a viewer is streaming content over a set-top-box, digital antenna, or virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD) ads can be delivered across them all, in real-time. 

#2 Seamless Ad Insertion  

A flawless end consumer viewing experience through seamless ad insertions is a quintessential part of any addressable TV platform. Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) is one of the core building blocks of the tech stack, since it has largely to do with the how an ad is inserted into live linear TV content and is a key differentiator in determining if the consumer has a seamless experience. Video ACR as it relates to addressable TV is the technology that not only is key to recognizing what’s being played on the TV glass, but also ensuring with high precision and accuracy the results that are driving key business decisions such as real-time ad replacements.

Powerful video ACR allows for early detection of when ads should play (specific ad breaks), where they should be delivered (households that meet predefined criteria) and which ads should be lined up for real-time ad insertions (optimized based on brand or creative). Cutting-edge video ACR is needed to handle natural broadcast delays that occur in TV programming like live sports. With a reliable video ACR capabilities incorporated in the tech stack, addressable TV is an accurate and trustworthy solution that the TV ecosystem can add as a cornerstone in their media mix. 

#3 Trust and Transparency

Establishing trust and transparency with consumers through ethical data practices is at the core of any successful addressable TV platform. Consumer privacy is just as critical as creating a more personal, enjoyable advertising experience. A lack of secure and anonymous data collection impacts the whole addressable ecosystem, right from the very onset. 

In addition to gaining consumer trust, the addressable TV space also faces the daunting challenge of establishing trust across the entire existing TV ecosystem. For TV programmers, advertisers and agencies to have confidence in buying and selling addressable ads, they need standardization and transparency in how they measure and track success. For addressable advertising to be operationally successful, ad insertion execution should be seamless and the buying process itself needs to be streamlined across all of the different places where addressable TV inventory is bought and sold. There are three primary metrics that should be considered when tracking success, these KPIs are table stakes to bring trust and transparency to addressable TV and include active TV rate (the rate at which addressable devices are actively replacing ads across networks), identity match rate (the success of ads matching their target audience) and ad replacement success rate (the rate at which ads are replaced flawlessly). 

Without standards, many variables exist that would likely differ across MVPDs (the various satellite and cable providers) and smart TV OEMs (the original equipment manufacturers producing the TV sets), including target segment definitions and universe estimates, technical success factors for ad replacement success rate and more. To streamline the buying process for advertisers and enable consistency across different addressable platforms, industry standards will need to be developed. For all advertisers, that means having trusted partners who provide transparency to every campaign that is measurable and more importantly comparable across addressable platforms.

As smart TVs continue to experience massive market penetration and linear TV advertising transforms to a more targeted experience, a focus on frictionless workflow, delivery precision, and transparency will help move the addressable ecosystem forward. A powerful tech stack will go a long way in helping build a more scaled addressable TV future. 

Kelly Abcarian is the General Manager for Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising Group. She's focused on executing Nielsen's commitment to assemble the critical technology and expertise needed to make true one-to-one TV advertising a reality.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has driven television and streaming content viewership to new highs, and at the same time is presenting ad buyers and sellers with data that could accelerate the shift from age and demographic-centered measurement to more individualized metrics, according to panelists at the Future-produced Advanced Advertising Virtual Summit Tuesday.

In a keynote discussion with event moderator and B+C senior content producer Jon Lafayette, Hearts & Science CEO Erin Matts said that audiences are shifting not only because they are at home, but also because of the availability of certain content.

Hearts & Science is a unit of Omnicom Media Group, which places about $1 of every $4 spent on sports programming for its clients, Matts said. As live sports has been virtually non-existent during the pandemic, agencies like Hearts & Minds need to seek out where those typical sports audiences are watching now.

Related: Experts See Opportunity for Targeting, AVOD Buys

And viewership is growing. According to Canoe VP of Global Sales Chris Pizzurro, on demand viewing is up 20%, primarily in the kids, drama and movie segments and that TV viewing as a whole is up during the pandemic.

“Consumers are definitely finding comfort in television as a whole,” Pizzurro said, adding that they also seem to be watching commercials as ad impressions seem to be even with last year. “We haven’t seen the dramatic declines other platforms have.”

The same holds true for streaming services, Matts added. While Hearts & Minds, like most agencies were geared up for the so-called streaming wars as new entrants in direct-to-consumer content distribution came on the scene, no one anticipated the huge spike in viewership as more and more Americans were confined to their homes.

Matts said that one of the priorities was to find where consumers were going if they weren’t watching sports. And she said while many are watching new programming on the streaming services, many have gravitated toward “comfort” programming, like old episodes of Friends and Seinfeld and even podcasts and other audio programming.

There is tremendous opportunity, she added in “understanding those audiences, understanding where time goes for them and how they are spending that time and being able to elegantly insert brands in a meaningful way that delivers the right kind of message that is appropriate for this moment in time.”

While some clients are buying ads in the scatter markets to find those wayward viewers, Matts said the pandemic and changing viewing habits could force the industry to take a harder look at how they traditionally sell ads.

“I think this is such an interesting opportunity to almost reframe how we think about the upfronts,” Matt said. “This has been a time honored tradition that we’ve had in this industry for a very long time, it's been extremely successful. But we’ve got clients who are on different timelines, we’ve got clients who have different needs and I think it gives us an opportunity to take a step back. Any sort of refresh to how we think about the industry is a welcome change, and one that honestly all of my clients have been welcoming themselves.”

More Summit Coverage: Experts See Opportunities for Targeting, AVOD; 'Last Dance' Shows Disney's Agility; Strategies For Smart Spending After Crisis

It also appears to be changing how advertisers are looking at their audiences, she said.

“Clients are much more willing to take some risks at this point,” Matts said. “It also brings this idea of audience and people-based approaches much more into focus and allows advertisers to really explore some things they haven’t been able to do before.”

Matts added that when the world and business emerge from the pandemic sometime in the future, the opportunity to focus on people rather than demographics will be more important than ever.

“Operating around audiences instead of the broad approach of demographics helps us to understand people at an individual level, helps us with empathy, helps us understand and better optimize messages and media,” Matts said. “It was important before all of this, but it is even more important right this very moment because we really need to understand what is motivating people and what is motivating them to buy or not buy at this moment, but will help us weather the storm beyond this.”

Addressable advertising is gaining scale, said Spectrum Reach Group VP of Advanced Advertising Sales Kim Norris in a separate panel discussion.

“In 2018 we executed dozens of addressable campaigns. In 2019 it was hundreds. I think that scale is growing,” Norris said, adding that standards and common platforms and approaches are needed to take advantage of that scale.

She added that buyers and sellers are working together to reach that goal.

“There is more collaboration now than I have ever seen,” Norris said. “All of that collaboration between programmers, MVPDs, ad tech companies, data companies have really pushed forward the advances. I think the scale is there for this to now be a viable business -- I think we see it in the activity. And now we need these organizations to coalesce so that we can actually create the standards so that there are use cases and approaches for the advertisers and agency holding companies to really follow. ”

FuboTV VP ad sales Chris Flatley said that while stay-at-home orders have helped drive content viewership “through the roof,” he doesn’t believe the disruption caused by the pandemic will change how advertisers are buying.

“When you look at advertisers, they’re either buying addressable or they’re not buying addressable,” Flatley said. “I don’t think COVID-19 is really going to impact that. What’s really happening is, ‘Are they buying at all right now?’ If they are, they’re buying the way they’ve always been, whether that’s addressable or run of network.”

As an example, he pointed to an addressable client that sells products that sanitizes surfaces, which would appear to be even more widely popular during the pandemic.

“They keep buying addressable,” Flatley said of the client. “I think when you look at how the advertiser thinks, they still know who their buyer is and who the decision maker is. I think the current environment doesn’t change whether someone is buying addressable or not. Whether they’re buying or not is what we’re waiting on as we climb back up the hill.”

But as more and more networks become addressable nationally, there is a need to figure out how addressable fits into their other advertising tactics.

Clypd chief strategy officer Jason Burke said that addressable is really just another tactic for advertisers, and most don’t want to put all their marketing eggs in one basket. One tactic is to use addressable alongside linear ads, using it to tell a story, a second chapter in the message, via addressable ads.

“The media owners are looking to use addressability to do a handful of things,” Burke said. “One is to drive yield across their whole portfolio, potentially using addressability to deliver against audiences that are underperforming in other environments and really deliver to the consumer a great experience, and then its relevant advertising, or advertising that is targeted to them as an individual person, versus the broad demographic in which they reside.”

Measurement giant Nielsen unveiled plans to beta test its linear TV addressable platform in January, and Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising Group general manager Kelly Abcarian said that while some changes had to be made because of COVID-19, the project is going forward.

“Much like everyone else, we’ve had to spend some time to adapt our beta program to the changing times that we see ourselves in,” Abcarian said. “...Though our beta program may not look like what we originally envisioned, we are moving forward with the beta.”

She added that originally, the first phase of the test involved getting into its partners’ facilities on premises and installing two TV sets.

“Obviously given the safety concerns and societal restrictions, we are no longer able to work on the premises,” Abcarian said. “We had to get creative, and what we’ve done is introduce a new virtual experience. That’s going to enable mimicking what they would have done on premises, but doing it via a virtual environment.

“...They’ll get access to be able to look at the true ad replacements that are happening, so that they can feel confident before this capability goes out in front of real viewers,” Abcarian continued. “And they can also use our UI so they can create inventory rules much like they do in linear television today whether that’s brand separation or other types of rules and see those rules in action. And make sure that they have the confidence that they know how they are going to unlock this linear inventory as we move ahead toward commercialization.”

My co-workers look very different these days. I’m sure yours do as well. My daughters, 8 and 13 years old, and husband and I have been on lockdown in Chicago since early March. The last time I spent this much time with people in their demographics was when I was in grade school. Instead of back-to-back meetings, client lunches and strategy meetings exclusively, I now look at my “office mates” and see my 8-year-old daughter working on adding and subtracting (I’ll teach her the finer points about ACR and real-time ad decisioning soon, I'll bet). She’s at the kitchen counter in what truly is an open office plan.

The other vertical in this space are my two 160-pound dogs, snoring very loudly as I try to lead my Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising team through this new way to work. As much as I try to create a daily routine for all of us, I have had to let go of a time schedule with my kids and focus more on what needs to get done.

This is a new normal that none of us could have ever predicted or prepared for. So, how do we manage it all? On the eLearning front, here are some tips that worked in my home:

Don’t Expect Perfection: Focus on a daily routine of what needs to be accomplished versus a timed schedule. By creating a list of goals daily, setting aside 10 to 15 minutes to get the morning going and an afternoon daily wrapup, you and your child can share in the list of accomplishments you have both achieved and hold each other accountable. Kids love to help enforce the rules!

Establish Some Routine: Make it clear to your children when you need to do your work and when they need to do their own work. I know this can be much more challenging for those with younger kids, but during those times, have them engage in reading a book or listening to a podcast to inspire more scientific thinking and innovative tinkering at home, “Wow in the World” is a great resource for this.

Bring Fun Into eLearning: Find ways to encourage their creativity and thinking, one thing we have done at my house is to allow my kids to use our front glass door like a dry-erase board, our girls list their goals for the day or my youngest has had fun writing out her math problems and solving them with her sister’s help. Think of ways you can create a safe and fun environment for them — this will only encourage them to want to lean in as well.

Don’t Forget Breaks Are Important: Your kids don’t need to finish all of their learning in one setting. Balance activities to make sure kids have breaks. And just as important for your own sanity, schedule in work breaks so you and your kids can have some time to unwind. I understand some countries and cities have rules on being outdoors, but if you are able to take a walk in your neighborhood or go on a bike ride, it can be very beneficial. This is a great way to remove your own anxiety and stress this new “WFH” environment is likely creating for you as well. Don’t worry, there is no 9 to 5 or typical school day anymore!

Kids Are Social Creatures: Don’t forget that your kids need social interaction and space away from us to develop and grow. For younger kids, schedule virtual playdates where maybe they can play a board game or card game over Facetime or watch a kid’s movie together with their friends. For the older kids, allow them to do virtual hangouts with their friends over their social media platform of choice. Make sure they are staying in touch with friends, this is just as important as you staying in touch and connected as well.

So, when you find yourself feeling overwhelmed managing your new “WFH” reality, take a step back. Reach out to your friends and colleagues and ask them for advice or help, as likely they are feeling the same stress too. By all of us being more vulnerable, the level of trust we will have as a Nielsen business will continue to go higher as we are humanized to all of the people around us. In the end, just remember, we are all learning some very valuable lessons together on how to weather a crisis and come out on the other side stronger, and this may be the most important lesson your kids will ever learn as well.

The irony is a global pandemic might have moved co-workers apart, but when this is all over and done with, I think we’ll be a lot closer as colleagues and recapture the true insurgents in all of us.

NAME: Kelly Abcarian
TITLE: General Manager, Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising Group
COMPANY: Nielsen Corp.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Through her work at Nielsen, Abcarian has helped to mint the new currency of how advertising will be measured across all video content going forward. Her work on one-to-one marketing, collection of real-time data on viewership through automatic content recognition and creating the first cross-platform addressable ad solution, along with the notion of holistic campaign measurement through total ad ratings, are bold lines on a rich résumé.
QUOTABLE: “Any company that isn’t willing to disrupt themselves will be disrupted.”

If you were writing the uniquely American tale of the Nielsen Corp. as a screenplay — the story of an untouchable television industry monopoly that suddenly sees itself roiled by a sea of sweeping streaming change, only to regain its footing with newfound relevance while heading toward 100 years old — you’d get a lot of pushback for inventing a character as incomparably heroic as Kelly Abcarian.

And yet it’s all right there in the script. Abcarian pulled off the dynamic double of both working to increase the breadth of Nielsen’s measurement pool while forging new methods and partnerships to ensure all the numbers would be useful and transparent, setting the stage for something once thought mythical in this mad era: true collaboration. Now in her current role as general manager of the Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising Group, she’s worked at expanding audience measurement beyond linear TV into subscription video-on-demand (SVOD), which opened the dam to the onrush of information about consumption of digital content. Streaming service ratings for Nielsen customers is now a reality, with Abcarian beginning by partnering with Roku on research initiatives. Suddenly, Nielsen — which once toiled in a comparatively tiny measurement world — is operating in a universe of visibility, creativity and comparability among once-disparate numbers. Addressable TV advertising — bringing one-to-one targeting capabilities to smart TVs — is a reality with her name all over it. The same goes for holistic campaign measurement through total ad ratings. And keeping Nielsen current with acquisitions of Gracenote, Qterics and Sorenson Media has the company poised toward the worlds of, among other things, automatic content recognition (ACR) and its smoother real-time data collection. Now that’s what we call rolling the credits.

True Collaborator

Her industry colleagues don’t need to see this movie; their reviews are already in, and frankly, they’re spectacular.

“Advertising is crucial in our industry, but if we don’t have a better way for it to work and be measured, one of the key monetization engines falls apart and content will suffer … Kelly and Nielsen are the key players in ushering in the solutions,” said Tracey Scheppach, CEO and co-founder of ad agency Matter More Media. Adds Scott Rosenberg, Roku’s senior vice president and general manager of Platform Business. “Kelly was my business partner at Nielsen from day one. Most importantly she evangelized the deal internally despite it being a very new kind of deal for Nielsen.”

And Megan Clarken, who is the chief commercial officer for Nielsen Global Media and an important mentor for Abcarian, said: “Ten years ago, Kelly was at the forefront of the phenomenon of streaming video when it went from display advertising to streaming.”

Right place, right time has been a pattern through Abcarian’s career. Growing up in a small town outside Columbus, Ohio, she earned her accounting degree from the University of Dayton in 1998 and “three years later, I realized accounting wasn’t the career path for me,” she said. She then spent five years as a senior project manager at Silicon Valley customer relations management company Siebel Systems. “Their CEO, Tom Siebel, was really a visionary,” she said. “He was innovating in the industry and it taught me a lot about pushing myself and knowing that innovation is always out there .”

The perfect fit for her creative sensibility and determination came in 2005, when she joined Nielsen, “which was then an 85-year-old company at the epicenter of consumers, and I thought I could influence how Nielsen measured real people.”

Starting on the Connect or commercial side — “Not too many people worked across both sides” at the company, she said — she did some innovative work that attracted attention; moving to the Media side in 2010, she was asked to run the digital portfolio of products, and also began to earn her reputation for evaluating all the details and seeing the way around corners while others kept looking ahead with blinders on. And that’s when the tea leaves told her the way to go: “I thought, ‘We can begin writing the next narrative around how Nielsen starts to evolve measurement as technology and consumers continue to change so rapidly and quickly.’ ”

Fast-forward to the present, and that narrative is in the process of raising all boats in a storm-tossed content industry, with Abcarian keeping a watchful eye on the horizon.

“Advertisers are spending billions in order to understand how to reach consumers effectively and they need independent, transparent information,” she said. “Measurement is a team sport and everyone has to collaborate. We have deep partnerships across the biggest digital players. Keeping the data behind their closed doors doesn’t help the industry grow and prosper.

“When we launched online campaign ratings it was with a strategic partnership with Facebook,” she said. “That was something probably five years before Nielsen never would have considered doing. Nielsen’s come a very long way in the last decade, and at the end of the day, we can drive value across everyone to the ecosystem at large.”

As happy endings go, the industry would take it.

Total audience measurement — a term that comprises viewing for TVs, tablets, PCs and phones — is finally making its debut in the next several months, with offerings from both Nielsen and the newly combined comScore-Rentrak aimed at tracking viewership across multiple devices and platforms.

While the new measurement products are expected to provide some much-needed insight into changing viewing habits, they also raise a deeper question. As viewers sit in the family room with their big-screen TVs blazing, tapping text messages on their phones and checking websites and social-media platforms on their laptops and tablets, what attracts their attention most?

The TV industry is awash in viewing data at the moment, but the real challenge for programmers — and advertisers — is to find the right data to mine from viewers.

Total audience measurement, once just a pipe dream for many advertisers and networks, is, to an extent, already here. Nielsen made its Total Audience Measurement product available to select clients in a beta-testing mode earlier this year, and is expected to make it widely available by late Q2 or early Q3.

Using a mixture of panel data, set-top and online information, Nielsen’s TAM product is expected to become a widely accepted extension of its TV ratings, the de facto currency of the TV industry. The new product will offer additional insight into what has been an increasingly fragmented TV audience, tracking viewership across devices and platforms and providing advertisers, media buyers and networks with comparable data on digital, traditional TV and time-shifted TV, as well as the ability to measure ads separately from content.

ComScore, which completed its merger with set-top-box data pioneer Rentrak in January, is expected to launch its total audience product — the Total Home Panel — by the third quarter. Total Home Panel will measure the full range of connected devices: TVs, smartphones, tablets, game consoles and OTT devices, the company said.

The Total Home Panel already is in the testing phase and measuring 4,000 active devices, with 60,000 expected by summer and 300,000 by the end of the year. ComScore, a much-smaller rival to Nielsen, began sending the first batch of its cross-platform ratings data — about 15 months’ worth of information — to clients last week.

Nielsen president of global products Megan Clarken has said her company’s total audience product is a “framework,” adding the data could lead to a rethinking of the way ads are bought or sold.

One possible change Total Audience could bring, she said at the Multichannel News/B&C Advanced Advertising and Audience Measurement Summit earlier this month, could be expanding the time frame over which ads are measured from seven days to several weeks.

“Once they see that data, that on the sixth week of a dramatic series my audience has grown 38% outside that seven-day window … we’ll be able to have a different set of conversations.”

But as technology continues to move forward, accommodating for time-shifted viewing on a DVR is just the tip of the iceberg. Viewers aren’t just watching at different times, they’re watching different content on multiple devices, sometimes simultaneously. With all of those added distractions, finding a way to keep a viewer’s attention, or diverting it from something else, has become increasingly important.

While simultaneous viewing sessions can be short, they can also present opportunities to drive viewers to other sites or programs, provide information, promote brand awareness or just offer a quick commercial burst. And as the number of devices proliferate, finding out how to draw and sometimes divert a viewer’s attention become increasingly important.

COMPILING CONNECTIONS

“If you check on your router at home to check on the number of devices that are connected, it’s crazy,” comScore CEO Serge Matta said. “You don’t realize how quickly those things add up: your smart TVs, Xbox game consoles, Apple TV, smartphones, PCs, tablets, Nests, smart locks. But there is also a lot of noise.

“It’s not simply putting in the hardware, getting the data and you’re good to go,” he added. “There is a lot of edit rules, a lot of cleanup and QA [quality assurance] you have to do.”

ComScore compiles that device data on a panel basis. Participants, who are incented by com- Score, opt in to be measured.

With the Total Home Panel, comScore can gather information on up to 20 devices off a single home router, Matta said. While it is fairly easy to determine which household members are using specific devices, the “noise” enters the data set when a neighbor comes over and accesses the home WiFi for a few hours during a visit.

“The fact that we know who’s in the household and what devices they are watching, we have the ability to see the complete viewing picture of everyone at scale,” Matta said. “This concurrent viewing aspect is really important, and it only becomes more of an issue [as] more devices and … more platforms [are used] over time. That number is only going one way — it’s going up.”

Once simultaneous usage is determined, attentiveness can be measured in terms of time spent with the content or ads on each device, Nielsen senior vice president product leadership Kelly Abcarian said. “[That is] a critical metric that we’ve standardized through the delivery of our Total Audience systems,” she added. “It’s important that a media owner or advertiser know how many people were engaged with the deeper content, but also how much engagement they have and for how long.”

That attentiveness data probably will be more of a customized product, Matta said, but it will be a critical tool for some clients to have in their arsenal.

“It’s a derived methodology, but it’s extremely important for advertisers,” he said. “Are they watching an ad on TV, or are they watching on their tablet? The fact that we know it’s the same person within the same household, who is in the household, and what devices they are watching, we have the ability see the complete picture of everyone at scale.”

With Total Audience not quite out of the blocks yet, adjustments and fi ne-tuning are sure to come. “The problem is, we need to get better data to drive these strategies,” ESPN senior vice president of global research and analytics Artie Bulgrin said. “We know how many people are on our digital platform at any given time, and the same for TV. The problem is we don’t know where they are.”

SEEKING BETTER DATA

ESPN is working with comScore and Nielsen on cross-platform data, Bulgrin said. “The data are getting better, but it’s hardly enough to make a big strategic decision. However, at ESPN, we’re assuming that wherever that person is, there is an opportunity to navigate them.

“Our multiplatform approach has been a big reason why we have been able to maintain audiences where audiences across most of multichannel are declining at a faster rate,” Bulgrin added.

ESPN has been at the forefront of driving the second screen, with continuous crawls during linear programs that tell viewers where they can get more information on stats and sports news and through apps like WatchESPN, and news alerts on social media and via email that drive viewers to the linear channel.

“All of that makes the overall TV experience stickier,” Bulgrin said.

The Council for Research Excellence, an independent, Nielsen-funded group of senior-level industry researchers representing cable and broadcast networks, advertisers and others, hopes to have even more detailed data from an upcoming biometric study that will be headed by Turner Broadcasting System chief research officer Howard Shimmel and Beth Rockwood, in conjunction with Nielsen.

That study will examine whether the proliferation of multiplatform devices could affect the future definition of viewing beyond the current “watching” and “listening.” It will also seek to identify how an expanded understanding of multiplatform device use in a household may increase opportunities for capturing exposure to content.

Multiscreen viewing has helped some traditional programmers because of the nature of devices other than the TV set, Telsey Advisory Group media analyst Tom Eagan said.

“The young people — millennials and younger — they don’t fast-forward [past commercials] because they’re on another device,” Eagan said. “So, the programmer doesn’t have to worry as much. From a programming perspective, they might prefer being on the second device, because at least they are looking up once in a while.”

Looking up from the second or third device is a critical piece of the puzzle and one that programmers and advertisers are struggling with as viewership continues to fragment.

Janet Gallent, senior vice president of NBC Consumer Insights and Innovation Research, oversaw a research project on second-screen engagement as part of her role within CRE’s Media Consumption & Engagement Committee. The CRE research found that audio cues and bright colors appear to be tools that can attract a younger viewer’s attention, Gallent said, something she called the “cocktail room effect.”

In general, even when a person is engaged in a deep conversation, they can have their attention diverted by something as simple as hearing their name mentioned across a crowded room, she explained.

“We’re constantly scanning for what is relevant to us,” Gallent said. “There are certain cues that people attend to. If you’re [watching] the TV screen and [you’re] on your smartphone checking your messages, the audio has the potential to get you back. It can signal to you, ‘This is something I should be paying attention to.’ ”

ESPN has been toying with the idea of creating what it calls a “cognitive bridge” in its own labs, Bulgrin said. “In other words, are there ways to navigate people to that second screen and then back to the first screen at appropriate times. Audio can be one component of that. But it’s very early days. A lot more work needs to be done.”

Part of that additional work will come from the upcoming CRE biometric study that will use physiological data from subjects like eye tracking and facial coding to gauge attention.

Bulgrin said biometrics are another key tool for ESPN and other researchers to gather more precise data. “A lot of this can’t be measured by simply asking people,” he said. “You’re relying on recall and rationalized response. A lot of times the body can tell you a lot more than the person can at a conscious level.”

EVOLVING METRICS

In the meantime, Total Audience will continue to evolve as clients use the data and find new uses for it during the trial period before the wider launch in the fall. The potential is to change not only how clients purchase advertising and through which media, but also how they construct ads, Abcarian said.

“The insights are going to help the dynamics of the market to open up,” Abcarian said. “There is tremendous potential there. A major advertiser may choose to deliver a broad branding message across traditional TV, but there would be elements of that message that would be reinforced or reimagined across digital video.

“What Total Audience allows is the ability to understand that unduplicated reach of the audience exposure to that given advertiser’s message, even as it’s recreated or reimagined, which is a really powerful tool,” she said.