The Coming Inflection Point: “Wow, Look At What We’ve Done”

Michael Hedges March 28, 2016 Follow on Twitter

Every few years media measurement gushes anew. Media buyers arouse this periodically in search of the answer to advertisers’s ultimate question: where’s the money? Then, too, media suppliers have their own questions. Big data holds the too obvious solution.

Television just isn’t what it used to be so estimating the number of viewers at any given moment given the wide variety of possible platforms is something of a trick. The measurement industry’s great and wise, generally, extract a few drops from the vein of viewing and report back to the media buyers after applying the genius of statistics to inscribe the purity of it all. That was all fine and good when all veins looked, figuratively, alike. But new viewing veins have been discovered, to extend that analogy one last time, that aren’t connected to the same heartbeat.

Big market researcher Nielsen is about to provide “brand level” data from a US household sample identifying just which digital gizmo (read: connected device, OTT) is most popular. "The ability to know how many consumers use which brands of TV-connected devices, for how often and for how long, is critical for clients who need to make informed content decisions and understand their total audience,” said a Nielsen statement, quoted by Variety (March 23). The new data set - Total Audience - adds together connected device and traditional viewing along with the usual demographics and consumer behavior goodies. Producers of video content, once known as production studios, are eager to share these figures with pay-TV operators and SVOD services.

Nielsen has been rolling out TV audience estimates beyond simply the preferences of folks sitting on the couch in the living room watching shows live for several years. The panels have been asked about DVR viewing and other catch-up means with data aggregated into a single rating for all-time viewing, at least 35 days worth. With the 2009 US TV season Nielsen began aggregating commercial ratings; just the spots, man. Live plus 3 days catch-up afterglow data is called, commonly, C3. The C7 version was introduced in 2012. “To put it more plainly,” wrote advertising industry trade publication AdAge (March 16), “C3 and increasingly C7 are quite literally the only relevant ratings data.” Nielsen has a deal with Facebook to access and aggregate their totally awesome data points. The Total Audience product is meant to be the next big step toward knowing, well, everything.

Others are taking advantage of this big data, big money opportunity. Jumping into the lucrative multi-platform measurement business is comScore, widely known for illuminating online traffic. That data will be combined with the analytics, optimization and targeting services available within the Adobe Marketing Cloud, famous for its programmatic ad buying tools. Earlier this year comScore and entertainment sector data supplier Rentrak officially merged.

Timing, of course, is everything and the time has come, wrote US ad industry publication MediaPost (March 24), to move on from “TV households” to “devices.” Digital natives are, supposedly, different; accessing the media world with their media world. “What is happening with fragmentation is actually viewing is increasing with other devices,” said comScore CEO Serge Matta at the ad industry 4As Transformation Conference. “It’s on phones, over-the-top devices.” Eventually, said Mr. Matta, comScore will get into ad ratings.

There are global ambitions within all of this. Nielsen already sells consumer and media measurement services across most of the world and comScore is active in 65 countries. Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings product is expanding, most obviously, into emerging Asia/Pacific markets “where mobile penetration outweighs PC or laptop ownership,” said the company statement (March 23).

Nielsen is also adding streaming audio to its US radio measurement. The Digital Audio Ratings product is part of the Total Audience package. "With the way people consume content in a continual state of change, it’s critical to capture all of the platforms where people are listening to audio, whether on the radio, computers or smartphones," said Nielsen Audio managing director Brad Kelly, in a statement quoted by Billboard (March 18). "To achieve Total Audience for audio, we must provide a comprehensive view of listening behavior across all platforms and what better way to start than with radio.”
Shortly thereafter, at the Radio Ink Hispanic Radio Conference last week, CBS Radio president Dan Mason set industry wags all aTwitter by criticizing Nielsen’s Personal People Meter (PPM) product, now ten years old in the US. “When PPM came out, I was jumping up and down,” he said, quoted by Radio Ink (March 25).“I was all for it. I wanted to make radio the shiny new thing.”

“I thought ‘Wow, look at what we’ve done’, “ he continued. “We’ve made determinations about talent based on PPM. We’ve reformatted clocks and music based on what people were allegedly wearing on their belt. I was wrong.” CBS chairman Leslie Moonves recently announced “exploring” selling or spinning the radio division, 117 stations in the US plus the legendary network, to “unlock value for our shareholders.”

See also in ftmKnowledge

Media Measurement - Changing Times

The times are changing and so is media measurement. Everybody wants more, faster and better. As online and mobile metrics grow measurement of all other media must adapt. 101 pages PDF (March 2016)

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