MARCO ISLAND, Fla. – This year’s upfront sales season for television networks and video publishers will be informed with insights from the latest tests of what are known as currencies, or ways to set the value of ad transactions. That’s according to WPP’s GroupM, which recently piloted currencies among 16 of its advertiser clients to compare measurement providers.
“We basically looked at their campaign last year on Nielsen, which is the incumbent, and we ran the same campaign on iSpot, VideoAmp and Comscore,” Bharad Ramesh, executive director, research and investment analytics, at WPP’s GroupM, said in this interview at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting.
“The results are here and we are now formulating our view on our approach to the upfront 2023-24 and long term what are we thinking in terms of currency and adoption and going beyond just exposure metrics for currency,” he said.
Advertisers have always wanted to know whether their campaigns are reaching consumers an ideal number of times instead of excessively repeating the same message to same audience segments. Those goals have become more challenging as consumers spend time with multiple media platforms among several connected devices, included mobile phones and smart TVs.
“Definitely, the brands want to understand their overall video delivery,” Ramesh said. “How do you cut out the frequency piece and get a unified measurement product and a unified reach? That’s what they want to do.”
Ramesh is optimistic that Nielsen One, the cross-platform measurement service recently launched by the TV ratings company, will help to deepen understanding of brands.
“In terms of performance, clearly we want to move to a model where every piece of media inventory is valued and optimized according to the impact it has on outcomes,” he said. “We have barely solved for reach and frequency. We have a ways to go on that, but that’s our three-year roadmap to get there.”
You’re watching ‘What’s Next: Scaling CTV Through Industry Collaboration,’ a Beet.TV Leadership Series produced at IAB ALM 2023, presented by Index Exchange. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
