On October 10 and 11, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) gathered speakers and guests at Warner Bros. Discovery’s New York HQ to discuss the future of media.
Summing-up CIMM Summit, Jon Watts, Managing Director, CIMM, tells Beet.TV the event discussed three key themes:
- Measurement
- Activation
- Innovation
A Transition in Measurement and Currency
“(We are) clearly in the midst of a transition,” Watts notes. “We’re moving into a very different measurement marketplace in which TV will be traded somewhat differently.”
Watts is talking about the industry’s growing embrace of new metrics for measuring and trading TV advertising. Historically, that was a case of widely accepted formats like Nielsen and GRPs. But we are seeing the emergence of audience targeting and new currencies.
Watts believes that this transition will ultimately deliver benefits and provide advertisers with more choices.
“We will have a more differentiated set of measurement solutions in the marketplace,” he adds, acknowledging the inevitable challenges and “speed bumps” along the way.
Unpacking Currency vs. Measurement
In the on-rush of new measurement and tech suppliers, the industry is seeing a lot of new “currency” and “measurement” solutions arrive. Watts explains the difference:
- “Currency is whatever two parties choose to transact on to support an ad sale, essentially when we’re talking about the TV marketplace.”
- Historically, measurement solutions determined audience demographics, which then guided advertising purchases.
But the landscape is changing. “What we’re now doing is giving advertisers options,” Watts elaborates.
“As long as we can measure it, we can transact on it. It’s just that we have more things we can transact on now because there’s more things we are measuring.”
