- Why Booming Ad Tech M&A Is Bad News For IPOs in
Real-Time Daily on
04/29/2016
The ad tech market is seeing an uptick in big-name M&A transactions. More than ever before, telecommunications and ad tech companies are joining forces to stay ahead of the market, and here's why.
- Don't Think Big -- Arrange Small in
Metrics Insider on
02/29/2012
Digital readers may not be familiar with it, but one of the most important metrics stories of 2012 thus far took place last week, when Canoe Ventures -- the joint project of cable providers Comcast,
Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems, Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable -- announced an enormous pivot. The project had been created to provide addressable TV
advertising across 100 million U.S. cable households. As of last week, Canoe has abandoned that founding mission, setting its sights on interactive advertising within video-on-demand and TV Everywhere
instead.
- The Future Of Media Metrics Is Interoperability in
Metrics Insider on
01/31/2012
If there was one clear story that came from TV this January, it was the story of interactive TV. That, for starters, was a clear major takeaway from CES. TV platform after new TV platform introduced
opportunities -- from apps to newly interactive consoles -- for advertisers to share content and advertising directly via the TV set itself. Suddenly, the very divided worlds of TV viewer and TV
advertiser have just become intimately connected. As media professionals have correctly observed, that new connection also makes TV newly measurable. It's a huge step forward for metrics. But even
with all that said, there's still a huge problem for metrics lurking in the background. It all goes back to what kind of transformation we're actually seeing in the TV world today.
- Why The Operational Half Of Metrics Is In Trouble (And How To Fix It) in
Metrics Insider on
12/06/2011
A lot of the metrics conversation revolve around computational issues -- questions of what data we have and how we can use it best, or how we can create proxies for data that we're missing. Obviously,
the computational discussions are critical. But often, the computational discussions ignore the fundamental problems we face in actually making the metrics feasible: the problems in technology and
operations that stand between a smart media community and a truly efficient one. So in the interest of having that complete conversation, I wanted to spend this piece exploring the major operational
challenges that media metrics face.
- Why The Cross-Channel Measurement Problem Is A Software Problem in
Metrics Insider on
11/11/2011
Pandora founder Tim Westergren recently made a pointed observation about digital radio. Pandora might own 4% of U.S. radio listenership, Westergren observes, but it doesn't yet command 4% of the $17
billion U.S. radio budget. Westergren argues that measurement is to blame: since Nielsen and Arbitron, the leading radio measurement services, look at terrestrial radio alone, digital media planners
don't have the apples-to-apples comparisons they need to consider Pandora as part of radio budgets.
- Will Hulu Ever Beat Youtube? It Comes Down To Metrics in
Metrics Insider on
10/20/2011
With Google's Q3 just behind us and a Hulu IPO on the horizon, it seems worthwhile to ask which one of these two companies will own the future of prime video inventory. That's still an open question;
and of course, any number of third players could come and take the reins. But what's important to understand is that Hulu and YouTube represent not just an epic battle of networks, but a fundamental
conundrum in digital media buying. And that conundrum is about metrics.
- The Data Management Conundrum in
Metrics Insider on
10/06/2011
There's a lot of information out there. And the industry has done a remarkable job of providing "point solutions" that solve very specific data problems -- whether you're talking about DSPs for
display, regionally specific media management technologies, or businesses that help advertisers dynamically generate audience-targeted creatives.
That's the good news. The bad news is that
it's very difficult to roll the data points together into a holistic view. That's why we're still stuck in a conundrum of last-click attribution that views display advertising in a vacuum. That's why
global CMOs are almost universally frustrated over the difficulties of rolling worldwide regional data into a single, global view.
- Metrics Imitate Life -- Which Is Good For Art in
Metrics Insider on
09/01/2011
If I had to grossly oversimplify the experience/metrics arguments in advertising, I'd sum it up this way: if you're concerned with experience, for you the most important thing is sharing a great story
in an engaging way. If you're concerned with data, you're only interested in sharing stories that you can tie to sales. It's a familiar tale. But two news stories from last week underscore how metrics
are changing -- and why the new metrics are building great experiences, not undermining them.
- If The Economy Goes Back South, What Happens To Metrics? in
Metrics Insider on
08/23/2011
No one knows for certain if we're headed for a double-dip recession. But if we are in for more rough times, what might that mean for media metrics? A few thoughts follow.
- Are Your Analytics Neuromarketing-Ready? in
Metrics Insider on
08/17/2011
You probably haven't thought through an analytics methodology for neuromarketing, biometric marketing, or any of the other new fields that scientifically measure emotional responses to ads. But you
should.