Media -- Far Too Important: The Cross-Media Measurement Debate

I was never sure if this was meant as a compliment or a putdown but what is for sure is that even then the early 199039s large advertisers like Procter and Gamble CocaCola Unilever and McDonald39s took the detail of how hundreds of millions of their dollars was spent seriouslyThere were some fearsome advertiser media directors around at the time but their focus like their counterparts in agencies was on the price paid Planning was something of an afterthought even a postrationalization amp8211 indeed at my agency the US media guys were called buyerplanners not plannerbuyersI was always brought up to believe that agencies were there to advise not merely to react And even though we sometimes needed reminding that it was at the end of the day the advertiser39s money and thus their final decision we should never be backwards in coming forwardThere are certainly as many smart people in media agencies today as there used to be but their skills may not always be aimed at the right targetsNew technology solutions focussed on such as optimizers or new ways of dividing up an audience into eversmaller segments are all very well as far as they go But we39re in danger of falling into the 39how many angels amp823039 trapFor example why is extreme personalization a good idea There are a whole host of arguments to suggest that most of the time it isn39t If it isn39t why bother building a system to do itAll of which is a long preamble to get us back to the crossmedia measurement debateThis may be a lot less sexy than personalization but it does matter in that it improves how advertisers spend their money not just where they spend it In other words a system that helps with planning decisions to sit atop the executional buying currenciesThis is what the UK advertiser association ISBA is aiming for with its Origin projectAny crossmedia framework has to aim at delivering something that helps advertisers decide on how best to allocate funds and effort between say advertising PR sponsorships events and the rest as well as between ad media forms so video versus online print versus search and within media forms so broadcast TV versus streaming versus YouTube TikTok and the restOrigin is following a pyramid approach the ISBA team started off focussing on withinvideo and now through the inclusion in the project of nonvideo players like the PAMCO Ozone axis are broadening from that baseA couple of weeks ago I was rather cynical about Origin Although I39ve never doubted the ambition I questioned whether or not the funding was in place to deliver and as a result whether the trade body had access to the right resourcesISBA in the form of their DG Phil Smith and the Origin project lead Richard Halton provided a useful updateThe ISBA team talks of a vision along the lines of a Greek temple with the currency measures delivered by the JICs as the pillars and the crossmedia framework as the lintel at the topSignificantly Origin now has 25 advertiser supporters up from six as well as an involvement from GroupM Omnicom and Publicis Funding is improving as advertisers realize that they need to pay for the work Progress is being made in what I can well imagine must be a challenge with the JICs specifically BARB and their broadcast mastersThe whole crossmedia debate started and continues as an attempt to meet a very real advertiser need In this it is entirely different from the JICs which exist primarily to meet media owner needsIt is foolish to see one as replacing the other but we do need to raise our eyes above measuring impacts exposures ratingsYou don39t dump something that works well but at the same time you don39t limit your ambitions to keeping on doing the selfsame thing even if you do it more efficiently or technically betterAudience measurement has had a limited ambition foreverIt39s time to think bigger The future of audience measurement is too important to be left to the audience researchersClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writersamp160amp160

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Media -- Far Too Important: The Cross-Media Measurement Debate

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Brian Jacobs

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Media -- Far Too Important: The Cross-Media Measurement Debate

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