For those of us who have been in the research sector of the media business for a number of years, there is nothing as heady or as exciting as what is happening now in our field of expertise.
As Gian Fulgoni, co-founder and CEO, comScore, noted at the company’s recent industry meeting, “There is a digital revolution the likes of which we have never seen.”
And
this revolution is creating measurement innovation, not only in the data-driven audience marketplace but also in cross-platform measurement solutions.
ComScore recently announced an advanced
version of its cross-platform measurement capability, which could spell the end of age and gender proxy measurement — eventually. (We all know that the media business takes time to adjust to new
metrics and protocols.)
But the excitement engendered by the introduction of various datasets and their application to measuring viewer and consumer behavior is beginning to mark a distinctive
change in the rate of new measurement metric acceptance.
According to Fulgoni, comScore is focusing on the need to be nimble in order to meet all technological changes. Their approach to cross
platform measurement includes four pillars:
-- Granularity for precise measurement in cross platform and also by individual platform.
-- Understanding the unduplicated reach across
platforms.
-- Buying and selling TV on advanced audiences, beyond age and gender.
-- Moving toward an addressable and advanced TV future.
In a world of panels and census data,
do you start with a panel and build out, or do you amass census level data and model demographics?
ComScore’s approach is data scale first, then the creation of a unified panel and census
metrics. “We believe that scale drives quality,” stated Fulgoni. “You can’t start with a panel and build up on it.”
Scale becomes important when measurement must
include an expanse of devices. ComScore’s Total Home Panel is built to measure content across mobile, network-connected set-top boxes, streaming OTT, PC, home theater, game consoles
and such devices as wearables, smart speakers and audio systems etc for unduplicated reach.
These advancements in cross-platform measurement could not come too soon for Julie DeTraglia, VP
ad sales research, Hulu; Ed Gaffney, managing partner, GroupM; and Beth Rockwood, VP portfolio research, Turner.
As DeTraglia explained, “Hulu lives in a world where we have all of the
benefits of television, and that is television content on a television screen. We have some challenges in measurement that we are working on….We sell platform-agnostic and are also looking at
how ads differ by platform.“
Attaining true, unduplicated cross-platform measurement is not an easy task."
“There is a long list of must-haves which makes it hard to do
well,” stated Rockwood. “Certainly the quality and the scale of the measurement are critical if we really want to be able to get a good view both of consumer behavior and campaign
effectiveness.
“Also, understanding how consumers are receiving information in a series, and unpacking all of that to understand consumer journeys,” she added.
Gaffney
concluded: “It’s quality, coverage and scale, in no particular order. We need all three to get a good view of what is going on out there.”
Having a third-party measurement
that is privacy-compliant and can also measure the full range of devices for specific audience targets will enable both buyers and sellers to realize the full potential of their brands.
But
doing all this will depend on whether the industry is ready to break with the marketplace measurement metric tradition.
“The currency is still age and sex and will be for the near
term,” admitted Gaffney. But based on the measurement developments from companies such as comScore, maybe the future is closer than we think.