Advertisers and Accurate Audience Measurement — Who Pays?

Smith's paper marked a significant moment in arguing for an "always-on" measure of audiences, cross-media.

Advertisers have traditionally sat outside the various debates about how the industry should measure audiences — in much the same way that they have, until recently, not engaged in other more commercial aspects of how media is bought and sold.

The ISBA initiative seems a natural next step along a road marked by milestones of trust and transparency, in-housing, walled gardens, and data controversies. Greater advertiser involvement in audience measurement seems like an inevitable progression.

One outstanding issue revolves around what a famous English comedian from bygone days referred to as "the sordid business of coin." Advertisers need to contribute more, both financially and intellectually, to the audience measurement world.

Consider the alternatives.

Agencies can't agree among themselves on anything. This has always been the case. Some might remember the suggestion that UK agencies combine to create a competitor to Kantar Media's TGI; one of many initiatives that went nowhere.

Most OOH vendors, print and online publishers, and video and audio broadcasters have a naturally limited interest in funding anything not directly related to their own media channels — let alone anything that threatens to assist revenue drift to Google, Facebook, and the like.

The platforms seem to be managing just fine as things stand. The risk to them is being exposed as less effective than, say, TV if the rules BARB created were applied to them.

Why would research companies risk creating something without a guaranteed end-client? And, who benefits from an independent cross-media measurement system? Those who buy, that's who.

So, the advertisers need to pay or, at the very least, persuade everyone else to stump up the cash — which will be nearly impossible to do without someone ceding control.

That's why I am proposing a levy on ad spend to fund independent, advertiser-driven audience measurement.

This is not such a weird idea.

In the UK, we have ASBOF (the Advertising Standards Board of Finance) that, in effect, funds the industry's self-regulatory service via a levy and has done so successfully since 1975.

As a planner, I remember adding the 0.1 percent to all press campaigns and explaining the benefits of self-regulation (avoidance of legal costs, flexibility, and speed) to my advertisers.

So, why wouldn't a levy work as a means to fund audience measurement?

Some might say it's a bit niche, a tad arcane; but that is simply not the case. Advertisers and the agencies they employ clearly need independent, reliable, and verifiable data to help them plan, buy, and evaluate campaigns.

In an era of fake news and made-up data and facts, this becomes more important than ever before.

What we have now, via the JICS, is outstanding currency data for use in trading. Where are the cross-media planning initiatives? (Before someone writes to me about Touchpoints — an excellent initiative in many ways — it's UK-only and measures a snapshot in a time of great dynamism in media).

TGI is 50 years old this year and was a great idea. But, surely, it's time for a fresh look. We should be building on the work that's already out there, giving priority to developing planning tools that sit on top of the trading currencies.

An audience measurement levy has been tried before with, as far as I can gather, success in South Africa. Why not try it in the UK as a way of funding the ISBA initiative? If it works, then export it globally via the WFA.

Total UK ad spend is equivalent to about $30 billion; 0.1 percent (the ASBOF benchmark) is, therefore, $30 million. It would be unrealistic to expect a 100 percent success rate for the levy (collecting ASBOF has never been completely successful), but it does seem reasonable to apply it to all media forms, as it is currently press-only.

Even at a 25 percent success rate (pessimistic), that still generates a "fighting fund" of $7.5 million.

I know that BARB alone costs tens of millions in the U.S., but we're not talking about replicating or replacing BARB. Rather, what's being proposed is an advertiser-driven initiative to provide an industry-wide planning framework for cross-media decision-making.

The audience measurement business has done a wonderful job measuring intra-media audiences for use in buying. It has largely ignored inter-media initiatives designed to assist in planning.

But in a time of ever-greater complexity, we need to move the debate forward. The only group in a position to do this are the advertisers (as the beneficiaries of better media planning decision-making).

The cleanest and neatest way of funding is via a levy.

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