• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 4, 2021

Kantar late Wednesday announced an integration with Google Ads Data Hub. The cloud-based solution enables advertisers to measure ad campaign performance on YouTube across all devices without the use of third-party cookies.

“While the industry quickly implements privacy legislation to protect consumers against breaches and privacy issues, those very actions make it difficult for advertisers to measure performance,” said Stephen DiMarco, chief digital officer at Kantar.

Prior to privacy legislation, the industry managed to measure advertising exposure with the ability to identify whether someone saw a particular ad and then determine whether or not that ad impacted their purchase behavior.

The industry had a very well-defined system that worked to determine whether advertising dollars spent performed.  

Privacy regulations have changed the way advertisers measure performance.

Kantar’s Project Moonshot is designed to create an ecosystem of companies that work together on a standard framework to ensure the industry has a privacy-compliant way to measure advertising, and aims to ensure transparency and accountability.

A coalition of companies are participating in the project, including all of the largest publishers and platforms. More than 100 are participating today, and DiMarco expects more than 300 participating companies by the end of this year.

Today’s announcement focuses on Google and YouTube joining the coalition.

“If a brand is running a big campaign, it’s likely they’re running it on YouTube, Hulu, Pinterest, and Snap and they want to know the measurement of the collective campaign, not just on publisher sites,” he said.

Kantar’s research shows that 65% of advertisers plan to increase their online video ad spend in 2021.

Project Moonshot allows brands to have an objective third-party research company to measure the effectiveness of campaigns.

The measurement is done through Kantar’s Brand Lift Insights, which supports a database of more than 25,000 digital campaigns.

Since Apple Safari and Google Chrome will block these third-party cookies based on privacy standards being implemented in the United States and Europe, the integration with Google’s Ads Data Hub allows advertisers to understand how their advertising performs across screens -- such as mobile apps -- through insights aggregated from Google’s ad platforms such as YouTube, Google Ads, and Display & Video 360. 

Moonshot, announced in 2019 and rolled out in 2020, came in the middle of several disruptions such as COVID-19, recession and social injustice. Advertisers pulled a lot of money from the media ecosystem — between $25 billion and $35 billion — because many went dark, or they wanted to ensure that the messages relayed were in tune with the times.

“Now in 2021, brands figured out their voice,” he said. “When they do come back, they will not come back as they did before. This disruption created an opportunity for them to come back into a more democratic ecosystem. It would be a shame for them to put the dollars back into the major media player, because that’s how they were spent before without real evidence that the media works.”