How Kantar's Media Measurement Supports A Cookieless Ad World

Kantar recently introduced Project Moonshot to measure the effectiveness of advertising in the absence of cookies.

Project Moonshot is the first advertising industry initiative to establish direct data integrations with companies such as Google, Pandora and in-game ad platform Anzu. 

The idea is to set up cookieless measurement partnerships with various companies, including Dish, Pinterest, Roku, Snap, Spotify and Twitter.

When asked to cite its biggest challenge, Jane Ostler, global head of media, Insights Division at Kantar, pointed to the technical specs to match the data across every individual publisher, along with complicated contracts and numerous tests. “There’s no button we can push,” she said. “Patience is required.”  

Ostler gave hints of the project in February 2020, when she spoke with Search & Performance Marketing Daily. Now, she shares the details of the global plan to support publishers and advertisers as cookies disappear.

Project Moonshot measures the impact of the campaign on the people who view the ads. Publisher data is used to verify who has seen the ad. Kantar then matches anonymous viewers with a panel of about 100 million people.

“We ask about 500 people questions who have seen the ads, and another 500 who have,” she said. “Then we compare the delta. We’re not measuring the media, but rather the effectiveness of the campaign.”

Project Moonshot, about a year in the making, creates privacy-compliant technical integrations with publishers to measure the effectiveness of advertisements. The goal is to integrate with more than 250 publishers globally by the end of 2021, Ostler said. Brands are looking for cross-publisher measurement. They aren’t looking to go to each individual publisher for results.

“Global publishers are aware of cookies disappearing, but some of the smaller ones, there’s a great deal of explanation required,” she said. “We’re still at a fairly early stage when it comes to advertisers really coming to grips with how to measure media effectiveness — where campaigns appear, and what it means for their brands. They are starting to take much more of an interest.”

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