Why the TV Advertising Industry Will Embrace Consolidated Measurement: #BeetU, Session 4

Welcome to #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Using Furious’s comprehensive and interactive dictionary, TV101, as our guide, these sessions will unpack the terminology of advanced TV, serving as an introduction for some and a refresher for others.

So, whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Session 4: Why the TV Advertising Industry Will Embrace Consolidated Measurement

The associated video provides an overview of traditional TV systems and workflows, job functions in TV buying and selling, and ruminations on the future of TV advertising. It’s the fourth in a series of educational videos Furious has produced in collaboration with Beet.TV. Here’s a sampling of Part 4:

Here are three seismic changes that are on the horizon for the TV advertising business:

1. Adoption of a standard for consolidated measurement. As digital metrics have pervaded—and complicated—the TV landscape, calls for simplification have grown more acute. Over time, we should expect to see a more whole-hearted embrace of the CPM, gradually phasing out the GRP, CPV, CPP and a host of others. It simply doesn’t make sense to sell using other currencies and then back into a CPM for reporting purposes, which is happening today.

2. Rise of performance-based buying metrics. Brands and agencies are eager for TV-buying metrics that are closer to what they’ve come to expect from digital, but this is still a future prospect for TV and online video. Specifically, cost-per-visit is highly aspirational. It would entail people seeing a commercial on their smart TVs, which are associated with their phones via the device graph; then, the phones would be “seen” inside a Target or Walmart using Beacon technology or via Wireless/Bluetooth IP signals to close the loop and link ad views to store visits.

3. Unlocking the potential of unduplicated reach. The ability to parse the noise of multiple ad exposures across devices to gauge a campaign’s true reach would be incredibly powerful. It’s still aspirational; privacy considerations make it extremely difficult to enable. But it’s effectively the holy grail of targeting.