• by Jane Clarke , June 28, 2012

GroupM Chairman Irwin Gotlieb stated at his keynote at the recent ARF Audience Measurement 7.0 conference, that the media industry needs to create standard measurement definitions. CIMM could not agree more.  It has been our contention that the development of a common language would help facilitate the integration of Return-Path data into media measurement and move audience measurement forward in the digital media world.

CIMM (the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement) is a group of buyers and sellers of advertising-supported media formed to promote innovation and explore new high quality ways to measure audiences across traditional and new media in the United States. CIMM has two major initiatives – Return-Path Data and Cross-Platform measurement.

As part of our RPD initiative, we commissioned a “CIMM Lexicon of RPD Terms and Definitions” and have shared some of these in a weekly Word-A-Week TV Board column that has appeared on Thursday for the past 18 months. The Lexicon was first released in 2010 when we set out to codify terms and definitions for Set-Top Box Measurement (now termed Return-Path Data).

The release of Lexicon 1.0 contained over 800 terms and definitions with accompanying notes. Two years later, as the media landscape continued to evolve and transition, we realized that the Lexicon could serve a more universal purpose by expanding from its original intent to now include terms and definitions for ACR (Automatic Content Recognition), VOD, DVR, the Internet and Cross-Platform.  The updated Lexicon has expanded by +70% to more than 1,400 terms and definitions. As with the first Lexicon, we received great support from the industry and in many cases were allowed to include terms and definitions collected by other industry groups into Lexicon 2.0.

With the imminent debut of this updated and expanded Lexicon, we now need to reassess the original intent of the TV Board Word-A-Week feature and have decided to put the column on hiatus as we reconfigure the article series.

Thank you all for your comments, questions and encouragement over the past 18 months. Please look for the new, updated CIMM Lexicon 2.0 on our website www.cimm-us.org soon!