January 25, 2023
Commentary
A Convenient Truth
- by Ed DeNicola , Op-Ed Contributor, May 3, 2023
The impetus for the media industry’s new JIC (joint industry committee) is at least partly due to Nielsen’s inability to accurately measure TV viewing during the pandemic. For reasons that seem obvious, Nielsen couldn’t keep sample homes in-tab and the decline in sample caused a reduction in TV viewing estimates. …
Exactly, Ed. It's very simple. The "JIC" is not really intending its "so-called" alt currencies to be currencies. And that is why there is no push for them to be accredited by the MRC--assuming that most could even pass its tests---which I doubt. There will be only one standard "currency"---a big data, digital media- style system which estimates "impressions"---based not on attentiveness or presence in the room, but merely that the content played out on a screen. That will give the ruling sellers what they want---big numbers to "monetize'---- while advertisers who just can't be bothered to fund a better system will simply have to pay up. Meanwhile they can delude themselves that their TV buys are reaching large numbers of people---actually, screens, not necesarily people---- and worry about excess frequency when in reality, there isn't a lot of frequency for their ad messages.
These arguments would be far more compelling if they didn't include wrongful assertions positioned as fact. A simple google search would reveal Inscape the source of ACR data everyone is using has a product being used by currency alternatives that is balanced to census. https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/380649/acr-data-supplier-inscape-forms-nationally-represe.html
iSpot, VideoAmp and others have done their own major investments to take big data and align it -- as if networks and brands funding the $70B TV ads economy wouldn't care about that as they push for new currencies. Good take here on that https://www.fiercevideo.com/advertising/ispottv-taps-us-census-bureaus-will-waldron-vp-research
And a simple visit to the MRC website would show you that iSpot is getting accredited for ad occurrence data -- which will be the backbone for ad first measurement at scale and the new cross platform currencies and that Innovid has done si as well. https://mediaratingcouncil.org/accreditation/services-under-review/television
It's one thing to have an opinion but let's atleast get the facts straight in an argument - if the intention is to help the industry get more informed --MediaPost has a responsibility to fact check this stuff more adequately and the author himself should probably talk to more people are the companies making these changes and or fire his ghost writer!
Jason, what your reference seems to be describing is what is often called "sample balancing" whereby a sample's individual members ---in this case ACR sets----are reweighted for "audience" projections so that when looked at nationally the total sample resembles the total population demographically. In other words if you have too many ACR sets from upper income homes and too few from lower income homes the projection weights of the sample's upper and lower income homes are adjusted so when tallied in total, the profile of your panel matches that of the country. Is that correct?