Most in our industry
should care about having independent, trusted third-party measurement anchoring the buying and selling of all advertising in the U.S.
First, the amount of money at stake is enormous;
U.S. ad spend will approach half a trillion dollars this year.
Second, advertising’s societal impact is unmatched by any other industry. It not only funds virtually all of our
news, information and entertainment, but it is also designed to persuade us to believe, want and do things that we would not otherwise.
Finally, as an intangible asset class,
advertising is extraordinarily vulnerable to adulteration, manipulation and misstatement—something actors in our industry (on both sides) are constantly culpable of.
We
don’t stand for the widespread distribution of food, gasoline, housing or drugs without independent standards and measurement. We should care as much for how Americans feed their minds, belief
systems and emotions each day.
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Unfortunately, most advertising transactions today are and will be bought and sold on self-reported numbers. Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and
TikTok today represent 65% of all advertising bought and sold in the U.S. and all of them self-report that vast majority of their ad transactions.
And their collective share of the
market is growing, as they rapidly expand into the TV and premium video ad market, a heretofore impregnable bastion, staunchly defended by legacy TV companies.
Except for what they
are selling into dedicated linear TV ad budgets, they are living on their own numbers with only cosmetic veneers of verification.
Given that they see themselves and operate as
mass reach direct marketing companies, it’s easy for them to convince themselves that they don’t have to operate in an independently accountable advertising world..
TV
advertising, of course, continues to stand separately.
Nielsen survived the onslaught of an “alt measurement movement” of would-be competitors. It fixed key
vulnerabilities in its legacy approaches (even if some players aren’t happy) and renewed long-term contracts with its sell-side customers, continuing to be required currency on the vast, vast
majority of national TV advertising campaigns. Further, by purchasing DoubleVerify, Nielsen enters the performance optimization market without having to directly play in media activation.
Hopefully, Nielsen will link all of the data that DoubleVerify tags can capture with its enormous top-of-the-funnel audience and publisher measurements, and the data from its TV viewing
panel and Big Data platform.
Reach and frequency still matter, particularly if tied to deeper funnel metrics. Brands and retailers need to know how many, how often, when and who of
their target customers they are reaching with their commercial communications, and they will need more standardized and more accurate media mix and attribution models instead of the plethora of ones
out there now heavily skewed to real-time and super short-term search, social and e-commerce impacts.
What do you think? Is there any independent ad measurement still alive outside
of TV?