Kantar’s Project Moonshot Measures Ad Effectiveness

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(Image credit: Kantar)

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.”

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.