CHICAGO — Marketers are moving beyond traditional media yardsticks like age and gender to measure the business outcomes of their advertising campaigns. Increasingly, those metrics need to reflect the time that viewers spending with traditional linear TV and newer digital channels.
“There’s so many challenges as we look across the industry that we need to continue to collaborate and work together to solve,” Kelly Abcarian, executive vice president of measurement and impact at NBCUniversal, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “Interoperability across linear and digital without losing the value of premium content along the way is going to be so critical.”
She said measurement needs to be more flexible to anticipate evolving business models as consumer habits change. Modernizing media metrics, monetizing audiences based on other criteria aside from age and gender and moving beyond the panel-centric approach are three key priorities.
“As we think about all the ways that distribution is changing things for measurement as well as the consumer experience, the ability to bring forward better measurement is here at our doorsteps,” Abcarian said.
The goal is to make connected TV (CTV) as predictable as linear TV in delivering outcomes. Interoperability of those different channels should reflect the value of premium programming, such as NBC’s hit shows like “This Is Us,” compared with YouTube personalities who have a massive following.
“As we move ahead, the value of content that drives great content development, and enables consumers to be connected in meaningful ways to brands, is going to be critically important…as we bring linear and digital and the walled gardens together for measurement,” Abcarian said. “If we lose and swing the pendulum too far to ‘audiences only,’ imagine content being cheapened over the coming years and basically creating a society that the value is placed on audiences alone.”
NBCUniversal in 2018 joined the OpenAP consortium, which consists of media companies that seek to advance TV ad targeting.
“Partnerships like OpenAP amongst others that NBC is involved in are going to be critically important as we look to modernize the measurement yardstick in the years ahead,” she said. “At NBCU, we have multiple irons in the fire right now in which to push measurement forward at an accelerated pace.”
OpenAP in April introduced OpenID, a unique identifier that enables measurement of linear viewership and digital audiences within a common identity framework.
“My hope for the industry is that we hold ourselves all accountable at the highest levels of trust and transparency, and that we preserve the value of content so that we shape a society that we all want to be a part of,” Abcarian said. “That will have a multiplier effect both for marketers and consumers alike. When we get that right, everybody wins.”
You are watching “What’s Next For Advertisers? Key Changes That Will Drive The Industry Forward,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Comcast Technology Solutions. For more videos, please visit this page. For Comcast Technology Solutions’ paper on these topics, please visit this link.
