CANNES — Although 2022 is the year when alternative measurement and currency systems got most attention in the media marketplace, Carol Hinnant feels like she has been living the future for a long time already.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Hinnant, Chief Revenue Officer, Comscore, says her company has long been an “alternative”.
But, though some things are getting easier, she warns of increasing complexity ahead.
Wading into measurement
“Comscore has been in television measurement for over a decade,” Hinnant says. “It’s finally … I feel like we’ve graduated and the new entrants are all looking at us if we’re an old measurement company.
Comscore previously acquired Rentrak, a specialist TV measurement outfit, to grow its offering.
Now Hinnant says the company is “waist-deep” in “measurement discovery”.
Last year, for instance, ViacomCBS signed an expanded renewal agreement to use Comscore’s national TV measurement currency for its news, entertainment and sports networks, enabling ViacomCBS to guarantee its traditional linear advertising campaigns.
Journey to Everywhere
Looking forward, Hinnant’s company is rolling out Comscore Everywhere, its take on a combined cross-platform measurement solution with single-source data, across TV, VOD, OTT, desktop and mobile screens.
“We have six MVPDs on the national local television side,” Hinnant says.
“But, if you think about our video on demand, we have 54 MVPD partners that give us daily data of return paths so that we can measure what’s going on in that space.
Keep the data flowing
Whilst the emergence of automatic content recognition (ACR), which can monitor audiences’ actual TV consumption, is allowing companies to better measure ad exposure, Hinnant sounds a warning.
“What’s happened with new technologies like ACR, you have more walled gardens popping up, and I don’t know how advertisers are going to deal with that,” she worries.
“Certainly agencies will be challenged. Brands will be challenged to understand and buy, because you have to piece together 15 different walled gardens. And that’s not really going to be very effective.”
Hinnant suggests Comscore’s integrations with Mediaocean, an omnichannel advertising platform it has partnered for 10 years, can “make sure that our data is flowing so that that stations and networks can transact on alternative currencies”.
You are watching ‘The Mediaocean Retreat’, a Beet.TV Leadership Summit at Cannes Lions 2022.
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