Two years after embarking on an
ambitious plan to develop a next generation measurement system enabling advertisers to control the reach and frequency of their ads across linear and nonlinear platforms, the Association of National
Advertisers is spinning it off as a for-profit business that will be owned by the non-profit ANA.
The new company, Aquila LLC, already has made significant strides awarding two major industry
suppliers to develop key elements of its system:
- Kantar Media, which will create new consumer panel that will be used to calibrate the reach and frequency of audience exposure across
platforms.
- Accenture, which will oversee the overall system's technical requirements and will design the end-user interface advertisers use to analyze the reach and frequency of
their campaigns across platforms.
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Technical specifications, including the size and scope of the new consumer calibration panel, as well as the timing of the rollout, were not disclosed
at this time, but Aquila is expected to roll out a beta version around the second quarter of 2025 and, ultimately a fully commercialized version later next year.
The 21 founding ANA members
who participated in funding the initiative will receive certain benefits -- mainly discounted pricing on utilizing Aquila -- but the system will be a commercial service available for other
third-parties, including non-ANA member companies to use.
“After sufficient testing and validation, Aquila is moving the [Cross Media Measurement] initiative to the next phase
of bringing a scaled CMM solution to the U.S. This will unlock substantial value for all stakeholders and deliver an improved ad experience for all audiences and segments through transparent
measurement,” said ANA Group Executive Vice President Bill Tucker, who will co-currently serve as president of Aquila, overseeing its operations.
Aquila will operate as a a separate
and independent business from ANA and will have its own independent staff and a board of directors, as well as an advisory board composed of industry experts.
While Aquila is not intended to
be a profit center, it was established as a for-profit company in order to be self-sustainable.”
Its goal is to fulfill the mission of helping marketers by using privacy-preserving technologies to manage the deduplicated reach and frequency across all
media-platforms, linear and digital, in order to provide a better consumer experience, eliminate waste by reducing excess advertising frequency and enabling better outcome measurement.
Its
principles-based approach to deliver a privacy-by-design, neutral and transparent technical solution, as well as its Aquila branding, were designed to complement two separate, but cooperative global
measurement initiatives developed by collegial trade associations outside the U.S.: ISBA Origin and WFA’HALO’.
"We're working in a coordinated way with WFA [World Federation
of Advertisers], which has the HALO brand, and ISBA [Incorporated Society of British Advertisers], which has the Origin brand, so we were seeking alignment with galaxy thinking," explained Tucker,
noting that the name Aquila is derived from a stellar constellation.
"It's a constellation of stars that has stars in it that are used by astronomers to measure the distances between the
galaxies," he noted, adding, "So there's a measurement symbolism. But it also turns out that it's Latin for the word 'eagle," which is a nice thing too."
The timing of awarding Kantar Media
the calibration panel project is noteworthy, because Kantar Media has not had an operational media measurement service in the U.S. for some time, but recently named former New York-based Google executive Nicole Gileadi its Chief
Strategy Officer for North America, including responsibility for building out U.S.-based products.
