Because there is no fluidity of audience-based television buying to insure a common, consistent definition across buyers and sellers, friction is the byproduct. “And I think that’s what’s going to drive frictionless buying. Education and a common language so that everyone is speaking against that common building block,” says Nielsen’s Kelly Abcarian.
The SVP of Product Leadership for the information and measurement provider spoke with Beet.TV after appearing on a panel discussion titled Building the Frictionless TV Media Buying Experience at Advertising Week 2018.
“It’s all in the name of bringing comparability and consistency to buying and planning and execution,” says Abcarian.
Nielsen earlier this year launched its Advanced Audience Forecasting tool, which enables buyers and sellers of linear TV inventory to accurately and more directly forecast inventory for a precise target across all nationally measured television networks. Inputs include people-level attributes like in-store and online credit/debit transactions and psychographics (e.g., pet owners).
Common forecasts will facilitate an understanding of segment sizes for transactional purposes. “Not to replace the secret sauce, but really to augment and help buyers and sellers speak more consistently and to understand the sizing that’s available in this linear data driven world,” Abcarian explains.
The forecasting tool was built through a collaboration with clypd, the provider of audience-based sales solutions, which has released what Abcarian describes 1.0 standards. “That was a consensus building across buyers and sellers so that they could start to understand how to think about benchmarks and norms around these segments and how do you measure campaigns,” she explains.
While it might seem relatively straightforward to describe pet owners, it can be complicated. “When you look at pet owners and you have new pet owners coming into a segment during that campaign measurement period and, unfortunately, existing pet owners retracting from that segment. How do you think about the fluidity of audience based buying to insure that there’s a common, consistent definition across buyers and sellers?”
Taking in the proceedings at Advertising Week, Abcarian believes TV doesn’t get enough credit for its accountability and 100% make-good environment. “That doesn’t really exist across the other mediums. And I think they’ve made real advancements and I think they’re realizing they’ve got to continue to run fast at that to simplify the advertiser’s world.”
