• by Charlene Weisler , Op-Ed Contributor, March 24, 2010

Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer for Turner Broadcasting, is a legend in the media industry. Over the years, Jack has helped form industry standards and has demonstrated the value of research for the media marketplace. In my interview with him, Jack talks about such cutting-edge research topics as cross-platform measurement; the future of C3; his current initiative, "TV in Context"; how to insure good quality research; how to groom the next generation; and, looking ahead, some predictions for the next five years.

Below is a short excerpt from the interview. Direct links to the full interview videos can be found at WeislerMedia blog.

JW: One of the important initiatives that we've been working on in the company is what we call "TV In Context." "TV In Context" is a process with which everyone is familiar: the context in which an ad appears makes a difference.

For example, if someone goes into a wine store and French music is playing, it actually has been observed to be true that people are more likely to buy French wines. And if they are listening to Italian music, they are more likely to buy Italian wines. So the idea is that based on psychological principles that are well known and well documented, subtle cues prime certain thought processes that can help messages grow.

And we have demonstrated this repeatedly with standard advertising metrics such as recall. But more importantly (not in terms of retention measures, which are not what it is about) it's a cognitive process that makes ads more effective.

Example: To put a commercial about an allergy relief medication after somebody has been in a movie scene having an allergic reaction. We did that with a Will Smith movie called "Hitch," and the impact of the ad was substantially stronger after [the audience] see[s] that.

Or we've shown examples of On-Star, which is a product that GM offers. You place that ad in a scene that is close to a car accident or you show that ad in a normal scene in another place in the movie, earlier in the movie before the car accident where it has not been primed... You find that On-Star as a product is seen as more valuable, the ad has more impact, is more emotionally engaging physically both in terms of eye gaze, blood pressure, heart rate, palm sweat -- all the indications you have of emotional involvement -- are raised when the ad is put in the right context. We've always known this in print. We've done it in print. We've done it online. But nobody has really thought about doing it in a concerted and systematic fashion for TV, and we've begun to do that now for movies and we are doing it for series.

CW: Measurement of cross platform. I know that this is a big topic. Do you have thoughts on this?

JW: Yes I do have very specific thoughts on this. I think we need to keep it simple, at least for starters. There are certain metrics that you need no matter what the platform is. It's the same metrics whether you are talking about selling soda or if you are talking about time spent with media.

It is all about volume. So there are three measures: You need to know "how many." You need to know "how often." You need to know "how long." So that's pretty easy to understand with TV. It's pretty straightforward. You can do the same thing with radio. You can do the same thing with newspapers, although we really never got to the "how often" or "how long" part for print. You could do it with online and you should.

So once you have "how many," "how often," and "how long" for TV, you can do the same thing for internet. You can do the same thing for mobile. And you can start working on a system where you can combine metrics across the different platforms.

Now that doesn't mean that is all you need. Each medium has its own characteristic. Online is more interactive than television, at least for the time being. You can measure interactivity. You can measure clicks, click-throughs, click rates, all of the things that you want to measure that make that medium different and unique.

But at the end of the day, you need a media plan if you are buying time. And that media plan is going to have some sort of measure of "how many," "how often" and "how long." So for me, combining across the three media means that we need those fundamental metrics first.

We don't have them. We don't have "how often," "how many" and "how long" even in the online space. It is very difficult to get that information on a website, for example. So Nielsen can tell me that people spend 3 ½ hours a month on video, but they can't tell me if they are watching tv shows -- because when they talk about video, they are talking about streams. And I can create a show with 8 streams or 4 streams, it just matters how many times I chop it up to put ads in.

So streams is not really a sensible measure. It has no meaning except that it is when a piece starts and ends. Some are long, some are short. We need some way to figure that out, and once we can figure that out we can start combining the metrics to cross video platforms.