The Race to Measurement Nowhere

Brands are clinging to linear metrics, while streamers and creators play by totally different rules

Last week, just before the 4th, Ad Age posted a story that was not surprising, yet still sort of shocking. Basically, as this year’s TV upfront negotiations drag on, hardly any big brands and agencies are using alternative metrics, new currencies, or big data - at least for the big money deals that matter.

After roughly three to five years colored by millions in venture funding, rumored IPOs, umpteen conferences and panels, and a Joint Industry Committee - brands and sellers are clinging to using old school Nielsen data (not even new Nielsen data), with all of its comfortable historical benchmarks and familiar metrics. Like the baseball scout that ignores WAR and OPS and clings to wins and batting average - it’s hard to break from what you know.

Which makes you wonder what this race to have all these new TV metrics that promised to revolutionize TV advertising has been all about.

To be sure, there are more moves to come - Open AP has a streaming metrics initiative in the works, Nielsen’s own big data product is coming, but ask yourself this - are you confident that anybody can actually measure TV consumption, particularly from a cross-platform perspective - the way we’ve all been promised/hoping for?

After all - where is TV viewing headed - and who is poised to rule the future of video advertising? Hint, it’s probably not going to be Paramount, which finally really sold, triggering immediate speculation about layoffs, cutbacks, and whether Paramount+ is long for this world (Hey Ellison - uncancel “Evil,” please).

Right now, streaming advertising is ruled by YouTube, Amazon, Netflix and Hulu. Three of those are tech platform/walled gardens - and Hulu - part of Disney - wants to be one, with its own ID and graph and all that stuff.

Are any of these companies actually going to play ball, open up their gates, and allow for open, cross platform measurement?

“All of these platforms have a similar challenge,” said JiYoung Kim, COO at GroupM during a recent video interview (see above). “It’s the stitching together.”

I was asking Kim about YouTube specifically, but we started to get into a question that lies at the core of this new currency quest: are we trying to get better versions of old metrics, versus rethinking how we plan media?

“When we think about quote unquote competing with TV or replacing TV we're really looking at TV metrics and metrics that originated decades ago,” Kim said. “There's a simple principle around reach and frequency that's been built and has kind of stood the test of time, but I don't feel we are really unlocking the full capability of what these kind of new platforms are capable of. Measurement has certainly not caught up.”

Kim added: “Another thing to kind of consider is reach is a means to something else.” Are we sure it’s the right something else?

Kim’s comments sounds to me like a gentle indictment of the supposed big data TV era. Does it make sense to translate fragmented, on-demand streaming viewership into old school reach curves? Should we be building something else entirely?

“The share shift conversation has been going on for an eternity around taking TV money, whatever that means, and trying to allocate it to YouTube [and others],” said Shannon Pruitt, Global Chief Marketing Officer at Stagwell Brand Performance Network during a recent interview at Cannes. “I do think that ecosystem is going to collapse.”

One thing that Kim, Pruitt and others kept mentioning was how they’d like some of the giant platforms to be better at explaining how all their properties work together - such as a buy that includes YouTube plus Performance Max and Google Search, or Amazon Prime ads with shopping ads. That makes sense - and that’s also not the kind of information that a third party measurement company is ever going to be allowed access to.

In the meantime, one area where the new wave of metrics companies fall short - and the entire industry for that matter, is creators. They don’t plug into existing tools. Their viewership numbers often come from the platfroms themselves. And their value can be sort of be translated into reach and impressions - but is likely better defined elsewhere.

As Kim put it, there is something to the idea of working with creators to generate “brand love,” which is hard to plug into a spreadsheet.

“The challenge lies in how we measure this impact effectively because the current metrics may not be sufficient for the nuanced nature of YouTube's influence,” she said.

That is particularly true with micro influencers, “where it's about finding the right fit and evaluating their contribution beyond just reach and frequency.”

That doesn’t sound easy - but could represent opportunity for a new kind of metrics business. In the meantime, brands are going to use what they have to try to make their campaigns look successful, even if that means hanging on to old metrics.

“We kind of ride or die by MMMs,” said Diana Haussling, Chief Marketing Officer, Colgate Palmolive NA a few weeks ago, referring to the resurgence of marketing mix models (which I suspect struggle with YouTube, TikTok, influencers, etc).

“They only tell one story, and we know how to manipulate it to tell you what you want it to do…so they CFO gets off our back.”

CFOs probably love cheap linear TV CPMs backed by old Nielsen data.