The dramatic shifts in people’s media consumption habits from linear television to streaming have led advertisers to demand more accurate viewership metrics. Comcast’s NBCUniversal has worked to provide marketers with that information, most recently in a “test-and-learn” project that included 66 advertisers.
“For the first time, we’re able to actually get an understanding of true cross-platform impression reach and frequency delivery, and we think this is a true game-changer,” Kelly Abcarian, executive vice president of measurement and impact at media giant NBCUniversal, said in this Beet.TV interview at the Luma Partners Digital Media Summit in New York.
The latest measurement methods track exactly how ads were delivered, similar to digital media that have data logs.
“We were able to really do that true cross-platform, and help unify the impressions across every endpoint that we delivered across for that advertiser,” Abcarian said. “That enables us to start to get to the place where we can truly optimize in-flight, ideally deliver in-flight.”
Marketers and media agencies also can receive more immediate reports about ad delivery, helping to make quicker adjustments to their media plans. Improved measurement also helps media companies and advertisers set the value of ad transactions in their negotiations.
“We’re on the pivotal moment of really ushering in a completely new ad measurement and transactional currency, one that really is solving the advertisers’ needs,” Abcarian said. “As we say, ‘marketers don’t buy ratings, they buy results,’ and we think it’s critically important that we deliver on that value and prove the investment that our advertisers are making is working.”
