4A's: Shift To Multi-Currency National TV Ratings 'Not Ready For Prime Time'
- by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, March 13, 2024
The 4A’s issued a report on March 6 indicating that the ad industry “is not yet prepared to move to multi-currency national TV demo-based ratings in 2024.”
The agency trade organization said there are a “multitude of factors and barriers that appear likely to prevent the adoption of additional currency solutions in the marketplace.”
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The paper notes that agencies have spent decades and “millions of dollars integrating currency data into systems for forecasting, planning and reconciliation. These systems are complicated, validated and in many cases, audited.”
And while “advocates paint a picture of readiness to transition to the next set of solutions, and while they imply the industry is mere months away from progressing to big data solutions promising improved accuracy, flexibility and measurability, we see hurdles that will take more time to overcome. Since currency and financial transactions go hand in hand, deciding on a currency solution requires a great deal of trust in data.”
But that trust “doesn’t come without auditing, testing, research and comparisons to historical data sets. Put another way, the solutions that are presented as ‘ready’ have not gone through audits, have not been widely tested by agencies and networks, have not produced consistent metrics and methodologies to compare to historical data with financial implications, and have not been fully integrated into procurement systems.”
The paper lists both short-term and long-term concerns.
Short-term concerns include:
Each of the four major currency vendors is now talking to the MRC, but the estimated timetable to accredit their products is unknown (and could be years away).
Each of the four major currency vendors is launching the latest version of its product in 1Q24, making it difficult for agencies (and even the vendors themselves) to be fully prepared for the BY2425 Upfront negotiations.
Agencies have limited bandwidth to perform multiple currency metric assessments without taking focus away from serving their marketing clients.
If issues are found (and one must assume some will be), significant time and effort will be required to communicate those issues, make adjustments and then evaluate again.
Contracts may prohibit the direct comparison of currency providers, which directly inhibits the ability to analyze these new solutions.
Long-term concerns include:
Systems should be flexible to plug and play using multiple currencies so they can be dynamically changed by clients. We have not seen this with most systems.
Agencies are concerned about having to pay for every currency solution that is supported by their advertiser clients and/or the publishers that advertisers desire to work with. This increased cost may have to be passed to advertisers. Each solution seems to present different viewership (or valuation) of the same program, creating variation in CPMs that will be confusing.
The use of different arrays of currencies in an agency seems likely to create many types of inefficiencies, from data quality (apples-to-apples comparisons) to user training and expertise.
Multiple currencies without a standard currency exchange rate seems likely to lead to inaccurate and inconsistent methodologies for measurement.
The paper was issued by the organization’s measurement committee.
"A multi-currency market would create opportunities in the areas of Local TV, Advanced Audiences, and use of outcome-based metrics like search lift and store visits. However, our committee thinks it is important to be realistic about how the industry can arrive at such a market successfully. It is also important to consider the complexity that such a market will add to an already complex system and to appreciate that any long-term solution requires thoughtful collaboration.”
Finally, a more realistic report on the practical possibilities--or more properly, the impossibilities---of using many alternate metrics as "currencies" with each seller selecting the ones that are most favorable to its sales posture while ignoring those that aren't. As the report states, if there were,say 10, " certified alternate currencies" in use would the agencies have to subscribe to all 10 ---which might be costly not only as to price but you would need more people to study all of that data, wouldn't you? Would clients reimburse the agencies for the added costs?Don't count on that, folks.
And one might add, what about the media-aloof CMOs and their minions--the brand managers. If various TV time sellers could pick and choose from any of 10 "currencies" wouldn't each brand have to specify its overall "needs" 10 different ways? Gulp!
Finally, if a brand wanted 5.893 billion sweaty brows per quarter as one of its "needs" for the upfront, but only three sellers used this "metric" how would a time buyer compare the offerings of one seller with those of another? And how would the time buyer determine that the whole buy---on 10-12 sellers---- resulted in sweaty brow guarantees that accomplisehd the brand's total--all-seller--- sweaty brow goal?
Yup.