Joshua Chasin

Articles by Joshua All articles by Joshua

• A Metrics Miracle in Metrics Insider on 12/09/2016
  

  Josh Chasin is a poet -- and he knows it -- with this twist on a seasonal classic:" 'Twas the week before Christmas, when alone in my house/ I was finishing shopping, with a click of the mouse;/Then I cleared out my browser cache, cookies deleted,/ In hopes of nefarious snooping, defeated."

• Advertising Works -- And How! in Metrics Insider on 11/04/2016
  

  Sometimes I worry that we digital cognoscenti can get so lost in the magic and elegance of all these awesome algorithms and Big Data assets, that we forget to take a step back and ponder the bigger picture: the actual people out there on the other side of all those myriad screens.

• Advertising Works -- And How! in Metrics Insider on 04/01/2016
  

  Sometimes I worry that we digital cognoscenti can get so lost in the magic and elegance of all these awesome algorithms and Big Data assets, that we forget to take a step back and ponder the bigger picture: the actual people out there on the other side of all those myriad screens.

• Inside Today's Digital Household in Metrics Insider on 02/05/2016
  

  There was a time when understanding consumer use of the Internet was relatively simple - way more complex than understanding engagement with any other medium, sure, but still relatively simple. All we needed to deal with was engagement from computers. There were no tablets, no smartphones, no OTT; your thermostat wasn't a connected device.

• A Metrics Miracle in Metrics Insider on 12/22/2015
  

  Josh Chasin is a poet -- and he knows it -- with this twist on a seasonal classic:" 'Twas the week before Christmas, when alone in my house/ I was finishing shopping, with a click of the mouse;/Then I cleared out my browser cache, cookies deleted,/ In hopes of nefarious snooping, defeated."

• For Best Results: Big Data, Meet Media Research in Data and Targeting Insider on 12/21/2015
  

  I've been thinking a lot about the deployment of Big Data assets in the digital space. Clearly, it is one of the most profound developments in digital metrics - and indeed, in our lives. The Internet of Things is already here; we can pay with our watches, and we've got Google thermostats. But in our space, I worry that there is too much emphasis placed on "Big Data," and not enough on "Good Data." Perhaps here the data scientist can learn from the media researcher.

• Rethinking Traditional Audience Measurement Through A Digital Framework in Metrics Insider on 12/11/2015
  

  What would a video measurement system look like if one were to zero-base such a solution today, with the tools we have at hand, given the measurement challenges we face, while unencumbered by legacy systems?

• Let's Not Forget: Digital Advertising Moves Products in Metrics Insider on 11/11/2015
  

  Lately it seems as if every article I read about digital advertising is about viewability, fraud, or ad blocking. "No one's seeing my ads!" "Robots are seeing my ads!" "Robots are blocking my ads!" It's enough to make the casual reader think the sky was falling. I'm starting to think we're all collectively guilty of "burying the lede": that digital advertising works, persuades consumers, moves products.

• Rethinking Traditional Audience Measurement Through A Digital Framework in Metrics Insider on 10/22/2015
  

  What would a video measurement system look like if one were to zero-base such a solution today, with the tools we have at hand, given the measurement challenges we face, while unencumbered by legacy systems?

• Rethinking The Single Currency Model in Metrics Insider on 10/16/2015
  

  One of the long-standing assumptions in audience measurement has been the notion of currency - and more to the point, of a single currency. I learned about the one-currency model in a very real way working at Arbitron in the '80s and '90s. We won one single-currency battle: spot radio measurement, where we competed with Birch Radio. And we lost one: spot TV, where we competed with Nielsen. But I'd like to offer a radical opinion. In the digital age, multiple transactional media currencies can, do, and will continue to exist. Indeed, they need to exist.

Comments by Joshua All comments by Joshua

• Normalizing Principal Media Buying Is Not Normal by Maarten Albarda (Media Insider on 06/13/2025)
  

  Please forgive a naive question, but I'm genuinely curious. Isn't this basically how the upfronts work? Agencies buy blocks of network inventory in advance, and then parcel these out to their clients? 

• WPP Media 3.0 by Joe Mandese (Media 3.0 on 06/10/2025)
  

  This might be contrarian, but I'm not sure this is as revolutionary as it seems. Already a significant share of advertising involves programmatically serving ads to devices; in that sense, people are already not a part of the equasion.

• The Ups And Downs Of Synthetic Data: Do We Even Need It Anymore? by Cory Treffiletti (Media Insider on 05/14/2025)
  

  A couple of things.1. An uptick in consumer opt-in rrates is encouraging, but perhaps the greatest threat to data today is the evolution of privacy laws, and the resulting "signal loss." A spate of new state privacy laws began going into affect in early 2023, and one immediate result, for example, has been the movement from the concept of PII to SPI (sensitive personal information). This has been interpreted to include, for example, data on consumer race and ethnicity, hich has become less widely available as these laws pass. I think with respect to synthetic data, it is important to differentiate between use cases. For example, there are opportunities to enrich an identity spine-- real or synthetic/virtual-- with attributes from research like MRI/Simmons, or even social listening services like Helixia. We can use AI to "paint" attributes from a pool of consumers across a larger identity spine, making the inferences we can make about the devices, persons, or households comprising these spines richer.That said, believe me, I'm as wary of AI as anyone; every movie about an AI future is a dystopian nightmare.

• Amazon Upfront Focuses On Sports, A-Lister Content by Laurie Sullivan (MediaDailyNews on 05/13/2025)
  

  Did Jamie Lee Curtis really say True Lies launchd her career? I woud have thlught the first Halloween film did that, 16 years prior.

• Video Just Killed The Upfront Star by Joe Mandese (Planning & Buying Insider on 04/28/2025)
  

  Ed--There is a problem with this definition of TV, and to illustrate this prtoblem I'll offer up my soon-to-be-21-year-old daughter. One afternoon when she was 14 I was walking past her room, and the door was shut. So I called in, "What are you doing?" She said, "Watching TV."She didn't HAVE a TV.What she was doing was watching Netflix on an iPad.She (and her entire demographic cohort) watch very little of what fits into yur definition of "TV."  When I was at Comscore and we had a meeting with a room full of 30-and-under planners (say a dozen), I would always ask, "How many of yu have a TV?" It wasn't uncommon that no hands went up (or maybe 1 or 2.) I said the same thing about landlines, when younger people were committed to cell phones; no one is going to wake up one day and say, "I'm 40, I have 2 kids and a big house in the suburbs-- I need a landline!"I understand how the major brand advertisers feel about what counts as "TV." But if we continue to define "TV" as being watched on TV, we are going to limit the definition to a medium consumed by viewers with the lowest CLV (i.e., the oldest.).   

• In The Industry's 'Currency Fiesta,' Is Attention The Ultimate Common Currency? by Tony Jarvis (MediaDailyNews on 04/08/2025)
  

  Hey Tony! Hope you caught that I name-checked you...Thanks for the coverage. The one thing I want to note about the work Manish and I are doing for CIMM is that, while we are both well-informed and opinionated on the toipic of currencies and currency economics (between the two of us we've been at, among other places, Arbitron, Comscore, Nielsen, NetRatings, VideoAmp, and Kantar), we are striving to keep our own opinions OUT of the work, and to let the work itself drive the findings. You definitely got a dose of our opinions yesterday, as we're at the very beginning of the work. But Manish and I are both prepared to learn and be surprised.Also, hi Ed!

• ARF Day Two: 'Who Do You Trust?' by Tony Jarvis (MediaDailyNews on 03/27/2025)
  

  PART 2 OF 2Where was I? Oh yeah.This leads directly into point 4. Aquila (and CMM and Halo and Origin) is indeed engineered for a world where the lion's share of impressions are delivered digitally-- addressed, as it were. The largest, best-known TV programmers (and audio programmers) in the US and UK are deeply committed to and invested in streaming. I can tell you that these companies on the left side of the pond understand the value of Aquila as a mechanism for assuring their inventory is surfaced in the best light possible for advertisers. I can't speak for Origin and the UK (and in fact as a contractor, I probably shouldn't speak for Aquila either.) But I can say that every media company Aquila has talked to that has digitally distributed impressions has, to steal a phrase, "leaned in."And finally point 5, which is really point 1. CMM, Halo, Origin, and Aquila are all the direct outgrowth of the articulation of a need expressed by the world's largest advertisers, for cross-media reach and frequency. I read Ed's comment above, and what I'd say is that this whole thing is being engineered in response to the articulated needs of the advertiser community. Advertisers are concerned about things like how to efficiently extend reach; how to avoid excessive frequency (no one wants to be a part of a poor consumer experience), and how to make every media dollar-- no, every dollar, period-- work as hard as possible. A few percentage points of misallocated reach can mean tens of millions of dollars to a major advertiser. No one thinks this is trivial, certainly not in this day and age.Granted, CMM/Halo/Aquila/Origin comprise a grand vision with a lot of moving parts. And there are other fine companies also building solutions in the cross-platform measurement space (and I worked at two of them-- three if we count Nielsen, who acquired my first employer, Arbitron.) But in the age of big data, identity, privacy, and digitally distributed impressions, this whole thing is inarguably forward motion. Bumpy, sure. But forward.

• ARF Day Two: 'Who Do You Trust?' by Tony Jarvis (MediaDailyNews on 03/27/2025)
  

  PART 1 OF 2Hey Tony. Sorry you couldn't make it in person.As you know (because Tina said so), I consult for Aquila. So allow me to address a few things.First, I want to make it clear to your readers that the phrase "death stars" as a characterization of the so-called walled gardens was not Tina's phraseology. I suspect you put this in quotes to signify that it was your characterization, but I want to make clear it was not Tina's. As a 10-year Google alum, that's not a thing she would say. It is fair to say that she positioned Aquila as the solution to the industry's walled garden problem, about which more in a bit.Second, I know quite well that the definition of impression is one of your causes celebre (did I pluralize this properly?) I would note that the question of what constitutes an impression is by no means trivial, and that the Aquila intent is to comply with MRC standards for impression measurement and reporting for a cross-platform measurement service (because one of the central mandates of Aquila is governance, which includes submitting to an MRC audit.) I'm guessing that now comprises, what, 1100 pages of standards? Toward that end, the MRC has been advising Aquila from the start (I don't want to name any names, because I'm sure Ron Pinelli doesn't need the attention.) Third, as regards the role of Google and other platforms in development of Halo, Origin and Aquila: we all know that the notion of "Walled Gardens" is the bane of the buy side's existence. I would suggest that the platforms' collective interest in Aquila is not to somehow "jury-rig" the system, but rather, to embrace a solution into which they are each comfortable sharing their impression-level data, to help remedy the "Walled Garden problem." The privacy compliance they require, and which is inherent in the VID construct, will likewise benefit all consumer-facing media companies with impression-level data who want to provide advertisers with maximum flexibility and transparency while protecting the privacy of their users (and, let's not be naive, their own company privacy, as in, from competitors.) (Like what you've read? Then don't miss part 2!)

• Omnicom's Metz, Dario Jump To Publicis' Spark Foundry by Steve McClellan (MAD on 03/13/2025)
  

  You neglected to mention that Omnicom also received a first round draft pick in 2026.

• With Companies Killing Their DEI Programs, What Happens To Ad Imagery? by Barbara Lippert (Mad Blog on 03/08/2025)
  

  100% disagree with the above.This is the line the anti-DEI forces want you to believe. That DEI is anathema to merit. This is an unfortunate bastardization.DEI is universally positive and beneficial.What AREN'T positive or beneficial-- and what have in my opinion been a mistake when implemented in the name of DEI-- are two things: quotas; and differentiatial standards by race, gender, or sexuality. We can agree that quotas and differential standards should not be part of the hiring decisions. These things are anathema to merit-based hiring.Unfortunately, the racists and misogynists on the right have made DEI-- which is, fundamentally, about REMOVING differential treatment by race, gender, sexuality etc.-- synonymous with quotas and differential standards, which is its opposite. To me, DEI shoulsd assure that if I'm on the operating table and the best surgeon is trans, half-Japanese, half-black, with they/them pronouns, THAT's who I want holding the scalpel. I don't want a mediocre surgeon who got the gig because he's a tall blonde white Christian heterosexual man. Be a champion. Be an ally. We'll grant you that quotas and differential standards are counter-productive. But diversity, equity and inclusion are all things that make us all better. DEI backlash is driven by the narrow segment of the population that opposes the values of diversity, of equity, and of iinclusion. All things that have made the US great for 250 years.

About Edit

You haven't told us anything about yourself! Surely you've got something to say. Tell us a little something.