Commentary
The Medium Is The Metrics
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, June 9, 2009
It's a lesson I learned early in my career, as a young reporter covering media for Adweek nearly 30 years ago. It didn't take me long to realize that what people on Madison Avenue were actually buying during their "upfront" network TV negotiations wasn't TV shows -- or even commercial units placed within those TV programs. What they were buying -- and what they continue to buy to this day. -- are "GRPs," or gross rating points. Once you come to grips with that, you understand how important the role of audience measurement and analytics truly are for the world of media commerce.
It's certainly true for television. And it's especially true for online and other forms of digital media. And as we sit in New York today at the OMMA Metrics & Measurement conference, I cannot help but wonder what the new advances in online measurement portend for the rest of the media world.
We sit here just a couple of days before the U.S. boradcast TV industry goes digital, and with it, a whole new era of advanced analytics will be unleashed on the media world, giving TV the kind of addressability that online online has had to date.
Agencies have already figured that out, and are rebuilding their organizations to more effectively plan, buy -- indeed, "trade" -- all media in a way that is more akin to Wall Street than Madison Avenue. Just look at Interpublic's new Cadreon. It's no coincidence that interpublic designed the new trading system to handle TV, as well as online, mobile, or any medium with a return path of targetable consumer profile data -- which pretty much means any medium, since all media is going digital.
The implications are profound. Along with that shift is a corresponding shift. Madison Avenue no longer is buying media, says Interpublic digital media chief Quentin George. It is now buying "audiences."
That was probably true back in the days when I discovered that TV shops were actually buying GRPs, not programs. But until now, they at least had the conceit that the programming mattered, and that context was just as important as the rating points. That may no longer be true as agencies shift to a higher order of analytics, and "attributution," that seeks to understand the consumer's journey with a brand -- a journey in which media content may simply be some plot points on a flow chart that got the consumer in front of the brand. In other words, content is becoming just an intermediary. In other words, content is just becoming a medium -- a means to that end.
It probably always was, but the advances in metrics and analytics are finally exposing that conceit.
Don't get me wrong, as the editor-in-chief of MediaPost, I am effectively the chief content officer of a company that publishes content to attract readers like you. But I know that it is the ability of our tech and sales teams to convert readers like you into solid metrics that is where our value is really created in the marketplace. I know this, because it is what I write about. And it is what you are reading about.
Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
Metrics aren't the medium. They're the mediocrity. Marketeers, especially in the digital media arena, have become so slavish in their devotion to measurement that they have, indeed, become fully "blinded by science."
They sit obtusely in New York at the OMMA Metrics & Measurement conference, counting beans and missing the proverbial forest for the trees in their inability to distinguish an inherently good TV property from a bad one. Even worse, they gather for the purpose of telling everyone else that this is the way of the future. Using words like "addressability," they want us to view all media "in a way that is more akin to Wall Street than Madison Avenue."
Well, we all know how well that's worked out for Wall Street lately.
Even more hilariously, it is being said that "Madison Avenue no longer is buying media. It is now buying 'audiences.'" Question: how do you "buy audiences" on TV without buying media? It's not rocket science, folks, as much as everyone want to make it so. The way you "buy audiences" is to determine what shows those audiences are going to be watching and talking about in the days and months ahead.
Oh, and by the way, believe me now, listen to me later, nobody's taking any journeys with any brands, any more than some MySpace rock bands have the 10,000 fans they claim. Because, contrary to wishful fantasies of media mavens everywhere, no one can convert readers like me into solid metrics. That's just not part of the real-time reality in which I prefer to live.
Media buyers look for the best value in GRP acquisition when they head into the upfront, but that's where the tactics fragment in the hands of countless unique theoris. Buers know that their upfront deals with the TV show, including embeds and product placement, have a tremendous effect on the power of their GRP conquest. Let's build up this discussion in advance of our meeting on July 31 in San Francisco where it matters greatly to all of the attendees, because getting the metrics and measurement right in the upfront is more vital than ever.