SANTA MONICA, Calif. — When WarnerMedia picked iSpot.TV, VideoAmp and Comscore to provide its future cross-platform TV measurement, it lit the touch paper on the “alt currency” wave.
Now it is unpacking its learnings and readying for the next phase in its future TV measurement agenda.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Andrea Zapata, EVP, Head of Ad Sales Research, Warner Bros. Discovery, explains what comes next.
Warner’s picks
WarnerMedia Picks iSpot.TV, VideoAmp, Comscore For Cross-Screen TV Measurement
WarnerMedia had held a beauty contest in 2021, searching for new measurement vendors, with the aim of going beyond simple demographic measurement, and announced the winners in January 2022.
Now combined with Discovery, the renamed Warner Bros. Discovery says it had prioritised data integrity, big data sets and partnership capabilities in its vendor selection.
“They showed up in a really great way to where us at WBD feel really confident that we can move our world into a multicurrency future,” says Zapata of the new providers.
Takeaways from the future of currency
Zapata says the experience of working with the new trio so far has yielded four takeaways:
- Standardisation is needed.
- “Personification” is the goal.
- Identity resolution.
- Transaction-capable currency is a priority.
“Because they’re not standardised, the reporting or the metrics that comes out on the other side, there’s a lot of variance there, a lot of noise,” Zapata says. “We do believe that there’s certain standards that the marketplace can rally around to help unify to personification.
“We want to make sure that there’s high-touch calibre panels for us to be able to capture OTA or audiences that don’t normally show up.”
Next proof-of-concept
The program is still evolving. Zapata says the early work involved testing the new measurement with agencies and clients.
That means WBD tested its original proof-of-concept for measurement across a “battery of criteria”, Zapata says.
“That gave us the confidence to turn this now into a next proof-of-concept that is really about testing the pipes. So we’re going back to the agencies, we’re going to have conversations about what we learned, what gave us this confidence. Then ultimately now is the next step to make sure that we are prepared for the next upfront.”
The next proof-of-concept kicks off in Q1 2023 and Zapata says WBD “will, indeed, be transacting on multiple currency in the next upfront and that’s exciting”.
You are watching coverage of Beet Retreat Santa Monica 2022, presented by Ampersand, MiQ, Nielsen, PubMatic, T-Mobile Advertising Solutions and The Trade Desk. For more videos from the Beet Retreat, please visit this page.
