With an increase in advertiser demand, it’s incumbent upon TV operators to scrap the status quo—i.e. selling linear ratings—for cross-platform measurement.
“We are at an inflection point,” Chris Wilson, comScore’s executive VP of national television, said during a panel session exploring the state of cross-platform data, metrics and measurement at the Advanced Advertising spring event Monday. “There is enough data, enough technology and enough demand… that it’s the new normal."
Wilson was joined by Nielsen’s Carl Spaulding, Facebook’s Lindsay Leon-Atkins, 605’s Ben Tatta and Publicis Media’s Helen Katz on the panel, moderated by Matt Spiegel, managing director of MediaLink.
Tatta, co-founder and president of 605, the Dolan Family Ventures-backed data and analytics firm, said the new-found demand for cross-platform metrics and measurement stems from the greater availability, and quality of, audience data—which can directly impact ad buyers’ campaigns and which platforms to leverage.
Marketers also increasingly expect data be available during campaigns, whether on TV or on digital, to measure their success, said Leon-Atkins, Facebook’s CPG measurement manager. “It’s measuring… true business value,” he said. “It’s the CMO telling the CFO what is actually delivered with confidence.”
Panelists, however, said media companies have yet to reach the point of being able to do that across-the-board.
Just as advertisers are testing the breadth of new options—programmatic addressable advertising among them—sellers are still in the process of figuring out how best to leverage measurement options to provide advertisers accurate, and meaningful, metrics, they said.
In addition, there is no industry standard for doing that with consistency, which Katz says “is critical” for media companies to do so successfully. “We need to make sure companies are doing what they say they are doing in terms of measurement and need to push the envelope to doing new things and doing the right thing and learning as we go,” she said.
Spaulding, Nielsen Catalina’s executive VP of product and strategy, said the industry is getting close, as measurement strategies improve. Advertisers want to know "which ad is working with which type of consumer, and which is working well,” he said. “There have been questions all along, but now we are able to answer them well.”
The event was produced by MCN and B&C.
(Photo via FamZoo Staff's Flickr. Image taken on May 25, 2016 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 3x4 aspect ratio.)
