One future “currency” for TV and all media -- or many? If digital media is any harbinger, maybe the one-currency is a bit too old school.
Currencies seem to be a good idea when you
can place a value on advertising inventory, and can easily relate it to other platforms -- or what was paid in the past.
That product -- a 30-second announcement on NBC, a 10-second video
opportunity on Facebook, a 5-second pre-roll on a mobile gaming app, an influencer video promotional on TikTok -- still means different things to different marketers.
What’s the value of
that one currency, then?
Think about cost per
thousand, cost per click, cost per action, cost per lead, cost per sale, cost per install. Other combinations and permutations? Perhaps cost per eyes-on-the-screen per-engagement, per-actual online or
in-store sale. Come up with your special “cost-per."
OK, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Perhaps one currency is too literal. There are many who are thinking about a one-currency
system — or what Nielsen One is positioned to be.
The biggest question might be a transition of historical data -- content, pricing metrics -- to whatever
this new one currency is.
What happens to low, historical “base” TV networks price points that Procter & Gamble, Ford Motor, AT&T, State Farm have worked on? Does all this
makes a transition to a new Nielsen One world? Does all this go away? And there’s the flip side: What happens to those mid-level TV marketers with less-attractive-based TV network price
points?
Multiple currency systems could be the answer, according to many experts -- including different currencies per industry.
Go further: A currency for each marketer that wants
one.
Still, in the near term, you might ask this question: How much is that national TV advertising spot in a NFL Sunday afternoon game on Fox or CBS?
In an ever-more fractionalized
media world, full of more granular data, with regard to marketing, content, attribution and/or pricing points, there will be more complexity.
No rest for the TV and media-data weary. The
pursuit will continue as long as people seek an easy tool to measure performance and predict outcomes. That’s the simple story.