Advertisers Finally Get Involved in Shaping Audience Measurement

Yet without measuring who listens to reads sees views or watches the media forms in which commercial messages appear there would be no firm basis on which to plan and buy or sell advertising We would also be missing a major component in evaluating ad effectiveness Unless there is reliable data on how many and who has been exposed to a message we cannot realistically judge whether a campaign has workedAudience measurement may not be as cool as this week39s shiny new thing but it39s a heck of a lot more significant to the future of our business That39s why it was the subject of extensive discussion at the 2019 asi TV and Video Conference in Prague last weekOver time the media research business has evolved a smart model The researchers recognized the need for pragmatism long ago developing channelspecific industryaccepted techniques to standards preagreed on by allBut times change and the systems previously developed are creaking as new players decide they have no particular reason to join what they see as an establishment party Take TV and video for example BARB Broadcasters39 Audience Research Board in the UK is very largely funded by the broadcasters whose audiences it measures Google Facebook and other video players do not participate they have their own rules and definitions that are not aligned with BARB39s These major players are actually doing very nicely commercially without playing to longestablished rules created by others in a different eraOn the other hand why should the funding broadcasters change their rules to bring competitors for ad revenue into their clubThe ultimate losers in this breakdown of research law and order as represented by the joint industry approach are the advertisers and their agencies But they aren39t the majority funders of the researchAdvertisers and their agencies need a firm basis to set budgets allocate funds between media forms plan against set objectives buy space or time and evaluate results At the very least there39s a clear need for total video measurement with definitions of what constitutes viewing as an example and standards agreed across the industry globallyThere39s also a need for research to allow for global crossmedia measurement This will enable more solid planning between media forms as well as within those formsSolving these problems is less a technical research issue and more a business or political issue noted asi conference speaker Jane Clarke chief executive officer of the Coalition for Innovative Media Management a US organizationFormulating a SolutionPhil Smith from ISBA the UK advertiser association who is also a major player within the World Federation of Advertisers used the asi Prague platform to launch an ambitious initiative to measure audiences across mediaThis is a significant move for several reasonsFirst this is an advertiser initiative A few of us who39ve been around far too long will remember the days when advertisers showed little interest in anything even remotely to do with media amp8212 let alone in media measurementFortunately those days are largely in the past due in no small part to the realization among the world39s biggest budgetholders that there are issues around the media world including transparency that need their active involvementThere used to be a quote framed in the office of the media lead on the McDonald39s business at Leo Burnett in Chicago that read quotMedia is far too important to be left to media peoplequotAdvertisers have realized that the shaping of media measurement is too important to be left only to the media measurement communityThe technical experts need to be briefed to allow them to work their magic And a key part of that briefing is answering the twin questions What would you like And who will pay for itAs ISBA explained at the asi in Prague it is well on the way to addressing the first of these The second issue amp8212 the one of who pays amp8212 will be the subject of the next Cog Blog postYou can access ISBA39s press release here via the asi site you can also see a video of me interviewing the ISBA team immediately after the session hereClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Advertisers Finally Get Involved in Shaping Audience Measurement

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Brian Jacobs

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Advertisers Finally Get Involved in Shaping Audience Measurement

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