So what's the first thing I spot when I show up at the Four As Media Conference in Orlando? A bunch of high-powered media industry execs sporting buttons that say "Free The Data -- Starcom"
My
first thought was that this must be some not-so-veiled reference to Starcom MediaVest Group's blowout with Donovan Data Systems, and the fact that SMG's new partner -- MediaBank -- is based on the
kind of open source approach that is antithetical to Donovan's historic approach to processing media and advertising data.
No, as it turns out, the "Free The Data" buttons were being handed
out freely by Tracey Scheppach, Starcom's advance TV platform diva, who's creating a groundswell around the idea that the TV industry needs to unlock, unleash and "free" the data stuck inside their
digital set-top boxes.
Scheppach's manifesto, of course, came last week in form of a post on on MediaPost's TV Board. That post, as you may recall, was entitled: "You Say You Want A
Revolution? Free The Data!"
"I for one say 'free the data,' for everyone," Sheppach wrote. "It's time we started planning and evaluating, if not negotiating,
television buys based on what's really happening in living rooms. It's time we had a metric that is more easily comparable to other media in determining their relative value. It's time we took the
most technologically advanced, accurate data available under serious consideration, with no excuses from any player in an industry claiming to have an eye on the future. And I believe that it is all
possible with large scale set-top-box data."
And just in case you were wondering about the buttons Scheppach was handing out, yeah, they were free too. But in limited supply.