How the audiences of television and video will be measured will be undergoing sweeping changes in ... [+] the near future. AFP PHOTO/William WEST (Photo credit should read AFP/AFP via Getty Images)

Over the past six months how ratings are measured have come under questioning. Nielsen which has been the source since 1950 has seen their accreditation suspended by the Media Rating Council. Industry leaders agree an overhaul of linear and non-linear video measurement has been long overdue. NBCU issued a request for proposal to over 50 measurement partners claiming, “It’s time for us to declare measurement independence.” The VAB, the trade group representing prominent programmers initiated a “Measurement Innovation Task Force” with the goal to expedite media measurement innovation.

Significant changes in the audience measurement ecosystem is coming. To assess what those changes will be, I reached out to a handful of executives at companies that are a part of the NBCU RFP to gain their insights on the future of audience measurement. The core businesses of these ad tech companies range from cross platform measurement and attribution to audience engagement and addressability. All these companies (and others) rely on large data sets for their analytics and have a strong client base in the ad industry. Below are their responses.

David Kenny, CEO, Nielsen

The future of media measurement lies in ensuring that the measurement moves at the same pace as the audience and the rate of technology. The media industry is facing unprecedented change both in the globalization of content and dramatically changing consumption behavior by the consumer, only accelerated by the pandemic. For example, Nielsen’s The Gauge report shows that in August 2021, streaming accounted for 28% of US viewers’ total time watching TV, a category that would have barely registered a decade ago. 

Therefore, future measurement must deliver a total picture of the audience in an increasingly fractionalized media environment. And we have to have one truth set. For Nielsen, that means measurement that is fully inclusive of diverse communities that suffer biases when represented by big data alone; deduplicated across all platforms; and independent so that marketers, advertisers and publishers can rely on that data and know there is integrity in the data as they look to reach and engage with their target audience.

I also think measurement with integrity is the foundation upon which outcomes and planning must sit which is why I am making sure Nielsen’s measurement data is interoperable allowing all of us to move faster towards the truth.

Bill Livek, CEO and Executive Vice Chair, Comscore SCOR

We are at an inflection point where the media will never be the same, and neither will its measurement currency. The pandemic accelerated significant changes that were already underway in terms of how audiences consume media. This represents one of the biggest technological changes in a generation. Trying to measure this shifting landscape with the same methodology that was created when only a handful of television networks existed has proven to be a recipe for failure.

That’s why the industry is united in demanding change. Simply put, there needs to be a fundamental change in how media is transacted in the 21st century.

I believe Comscore is uniquely poised to become the clear choice for modern media measurement because of our proven history of measuring audiences and advertising at scale. In a world that has moved beyond simple age and gender demos, our advantage lies in our census-representative approach, audience- and impression-based currency, enhanced addressable advertising capabilities, and product innovation for unduplicated and unified measurement across screens. We are proud that approximately 1000 local television stations, as well as 150 broadcast and cable networks, use Comscore’s currency every day, and approximately 250 independently-owned agencies – as well as every holding company – use Comscore’s television data to make better buying decisions on behalf of their brands.

There is a lot of talk about alternative measurement currencies. I have long believed that a basket of currencies is healthy for the industry. Ultimately, though, we will see a few “reserve” currencies that emerge as the clear leaders and Comscore is one of those currencies.

Jo Kinsella, President, TVSquared 

The TV ecosystem has evolved from linear to cross-platform, with viewers consuming content across platforms, channels and screens. For advertisers to engage with the right audience, it is critical they have independent, digital-like audience measurement. That means moving beyond age and gender (the “Nielsen norm”) to real-time, privacy-compliant, impression-based analytics that inform not only campaign measurement, but planning, targeting and optimization too. 

Across the buy and sell sides, the majority of our clients have already put the audience at the center of their converged TV strategies. The data exists to power an audience-first approach – from STB and first- and third-party, to device IDs and viewership data. This is happening now! We have thousands of clients leveraging cross-platform measurement to uncover “who saw an ad,” find segments that “should see the ad,” measure “who converted,” and then use that intel to continuously optimize their campaigns for incremental reach and outcomes. 

As the market matures, deterministic audience measurement, combined with outcomes and targeting capabilities, will be table stakes, if they are not already.

Kristin Dolan, founder and CEO of 605

As audiences become increasingly fragmented in the age of cord cutting and multi-screen viewership, understanding where media is consumed and by whom is critical for marketers and programmers alike. At the same time, accuracy and reliability matter more than ever as marketers and advertisers are being held accountable for every dollar spent. This means expectations for better measurement and analysis are growing. 

The future of measurement is about creating a better and more effective experience – one that is rooted in comprehensive, consistent data and analysis. Both the size and quality of the datasets are important in developing solutions capable of producing valuable insights for programmers and advertisers. These outputs must go beyond the backward-looking metrics of a given campaign; they need to enable networks, MVPDs, agencies and brands to identify the audiences that drive sales outcomes and build on this intelligence to promote a virtuous cycle of sophisticated placement, effective creative, optimized segmentation and quantifiable results in the form of attribution and, ultimately, prediction.

The future of measurement – and more importantly, the future of TV advertising – demands that each step in this cycle be informed by data; it is about knowing the audience, defining 'persuadable', sending the right message to the right target and accurately determining the impact of the advertising (or content) across multiple platforms and a plethora of screens.

While Nielsen’s current accreditation issues have raised awareness of the challenges, the industry has long known that better measurement and analysis is needed. 605 has, for the last five years, been building solutions that power the future of TV advertising for our clients: programmers, brands and more. They are based on our robust dataset – more than 22 million households – and a rigorous process that protects privacy and provides valuable insights.

An entirely new currency is coming to television, redefining how media is valued, bought and sold. This is a once in a lifetime shift away from legacy television measurement and opens the door to solve decades old problems that have plagued the advertising ecosystem.

The market is moving away from reliance on a single currency to a multiple currency marketplace powered by more sophisticated measurement capabilities that are cross-platform and can unlock value on the both buy and sell side. VideoAmp is aggressively working towards becoming a trusted currency by innovating measurement faster than anyone else. We have gone all in on putting the right people and teams in place to scale our efforts as quickly as possible. 

We are creating a more sophisticated advertising ecosystem that results in advertisers increasing their return on investment and publishers increasing their revenues. The fragmentation of video viewership has made it challenging for advertisers to understand who they reach and how often. On the flipside, it’s also made it difficult for publishers to get proper credit for their audience delivery. Traditional media currencies have not kept up with this shift and it has led to more silos and less measurability. With access to large-scale datasets that are commingled using proprietary methodologies, VideoAmp is providing the industry with the ability to do cross-platform measurement against advanced audiences in addition to traditional age and gender, providing a more accurate view of audience delivery than ever before. Solving these challenges is crucial to the survival of the ad supported ecosystem which underpins people’s access to quality content.

This is a pivotal point in the industry and we couldn’t be more energized to collaborate with buyers and sellers to create a system as though it was built for advertising today, not 60 years ago.

Yan Liu, CEO of TVision

As an industry, we have an unprecedented opportunity to organize around more accurate and valuable data for cross-platform audience measurement, whether CTV, linear TV or digital. Person-level, second-by-second data measuring all screens - TVs, mobile devices and laptops - is necessary for cross-platform measurement. This is the only way to ensure that marketers can appropriately value digital vs TV vs CTV advertising opportunities.  

The future of TV-specific measurement will rely on both big data providers and panels. Both are needed since large data sets (think set-top-box and smart TVs) only account for household-level viewing. Specific demos are often over- or under-represented by household data. For example, projected demographic viewership based on household-level data alone overstates the size of the "males under 18" demo that watch a major sports TV network by 185%. To solve these inaccuracies, the industry needs person-level viewing data to calibrate their big data sets — this data is available through TVision’s calibration panel. 

Another important factor for the future of cross-platform audience measurement is to standardize on value-based metrics. Attention and viewability are both metrics that can be measured effectively across digital and TV/CTV and then be used to appropriately value opportunities against each other. The Attention Calculator is a free tool from TVision and Lumen that media buyers can use to understand the true cost of attention for each type of media placement.  

At TVision, we believe that the future of audience measurement will be more sophisticated, and include multiple data sets. The industry will continue to leverage existing data points, ratings (quantitative) and layer on more qualitative measurement, such as attention, which will help advertisers optimize their ad budgets, and media sellers more accurately value their premium content. 

Ashwin Navin, CEO and co-founder of Samba TV

Digital and streaming media has gifted our industry with unparalleled precision in measurement built on a one-to-one relationship with consumers. Legacy measurement models built for behaviors from a half-century ago and grouping consumers into massive audience segments don’t meet the needs of the modern marketer. We believe it is table stakes for any form of measurement or analysis of media to map to business outcomes for the marketer, thereby eliminating guess work associated with media investment. Whether the marketing budget is associated with brand lift, sales lift, app installs, incremental foot traffic, or new viewers, these are all outcomes that we can measure in both digital and now TV. 

Differing metrics and methodologies by today's streaming providers only underline the need for consistency in audience measurement. In this environment of abundant content choice and total flexibility for how and when to consume, metrics focused on capturing and measuring attention and outcomes are all the more crucial. Many SVOD and AVOD players live and die by time spent, subscriber growth and churn, ROI on original content creation, and of course behavioral targeting. These metrics become critical tools for how marketers and publishers will compete for the scarcity of consumer attention. 

Sean Muller, CEO and Founder, iSpot  

iSpot is able to verify an ad impression made on the glass of a TV for a panel of 19 million+ TVs— and do so for every kind of ad, for every type of programming, for every second of ad play, no matter what kind of service brings the ad to that TV glass. That is a huge improvement to the state of ratings established during a broadcast era and a more dependable system for brands to understand how their investments are yielding reach. We can then take all those impressions and map the ad exposures to business activities and outcomes, again, at scale, giving brands a true view into performance of TV and streaming. While so much of the TV marketplace traditionally has been about measuring the performance of TV shows and estimating ad viewership by proxy - often weeks later, we’re taking an ads first approach to TV and doing so in real time. This kind of granularity and precision allows brands and industries to develop their own KPIs and invest in TV based on that, and it gives networks a new shared set of trusted benchmarks to transact on, and that is what we’re seeing and where it’s all headed.