In the emerging world of advanced measurement for digital ad campaigns, the currencies and metrics on which buying and selling decisions are made are shifting sands.
Many ad buyers, of course, want specific metrics to indicate real viewership and attribution of consequential purchase actions.
But many brands, even digital ones, are now getting frustrated by the fragmenting array of measurement opportunities – and are turning back to align their video efforts more closely with traditional TV campaigns.
That is according to an executive from media measurement house Nielsen.
“What we actually see now happening, is that the digital first players and the digital platforms, for premium video, have decided that all of the data that they have is just confusing the advertiser,” says Megan Clarken, Nielsen chief commercial officer, Nielsen Global Media, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
“So they want to compete against TV, and so they’re moving across to be able to compare to TV. Things are coming back to the more simple.
“If you look at the digital players, they want to compete, video is video. So we don’t think about linear TV or digital video. We see video, as video. And premium video, as video. What we know is that the TV landscape, the traditional TV landscape has always based their buying and selling or the way in which they talk about their audiences, in the same common currency.”
Such a trend, if it is happening, would be big news for a media landscape that offers so much opportunity for precision measurement.
But it could also be a warning sign for that same industry – rationalize your confusing array of measurements now, or risk TV continuing to call the shots.
Clarken acknowledges that the “journey” of the evolution of media measurement “never finishes”.
And her Nielsen itself continues to go through its own redefinition – adding digital measurements to its classical panel systems, and restructuring itself.
“We’ve had a new CEO come in, at the end of last year,” Clarken says. “He went through some organizational change in the beginning of the year and like anything internally, it takes a long time to do.
“Our company is going through a strategic review, and like anything, it’s a lot of work.”
This video is part of the Beet.TV series “Creativity & Data Meet at Cannes” presented by Nielsen. For more segments from the series, please visit this page. You can find all Beet.TV coverage of Cannes right here.
