EDO’s SVP, Head of Client Solutions, Laura Grover, speaks on Day 1 of the VAB’s TV Measurement Series alongside Claudio Marcus (VP, Strategy, Comcast Advertising), Peter Olsen (President, Ad Sales, A&E), and Kavita Vazirani (EVP, Head of Research, Analytics & Insights, Disney) with moderator Sean Cunningham (President, VAB).
Sean Cunningham 00:46
Hi, and welcome to the opening discussion of the VAB’s state of TV Measurement series. I’m Sean Cunningham, President and CEO of the VAB, and today, I’m so glad that you join us for this discussion.
Over the past 18 months, the VAB has been leading the industry in demanding accurate, transparent and modern TV measurement solutions and championing those who put them into the marketplace. Why do we do this? We do this for our TV members. We do this for our marketing members, advertisers and agencies who come to trust us and rely upon us that we’re going to help to advocate for accurate audience reporting so they can make the critical investment decisions that they make with their marketing budgets. This series is an important part of our ongoing commitment to help you navigate the complexity of the new measurement landscape. Through these conversations will equip you with new perspectives and deeper understanding of the critical issues and opportunities within modern measurement. Our goal is to empower you with the keys to understanding measurement that will unlock brain growth.
A couple of key things: first, resources. Just a quick reminder that the VAB has several resources to help you in learning about modern TV measurement of the 27 reports that were written and issued by the VAB in the first half of 2022 – 27 reports and marketing guides downloaded some 5000 times. The most popular downloads were TV measurement, streaming, CTV, multicultural, convergent TV. Measurement was something that you couldn’t get enough of. Your co-workers and your buy-side partners and sell-side partners are downloading all this material. If you’re not authenticated on the VAB website, do that and you’ll have access to what everyone is reading and first of all for an authenticated marketer advertiser agency, it’s free.
One more piece of housekeeping. A quick note that all registrants will receive a link to the session within the next couple of days. On to why we’re here. Our leadership roundtable. I’ve got terrific speakers, I’m very excited for you to hear their voices and less of mine. And the important part of this series is allowing you to hear directly from those that are driving the change in innovation and TV measurement. We’ve got four fantastic participants. I’m going to ask them to introduce themselves and I’m going to ask them to tell us their name, title, where do you work, and what do you do there. Laura, would you start?
Laura Grover 03:10
Great. Thanks, Sean. Thanks for having me today. I’m Laura Grover. I am at EDO. I am our head of client solutions, leading our analytics practice across all of our clients, including many of the folks here on the phone today.
Sean Cunningham 03:26
Terrific, Claudio.
Claudio Marcus 03:30
I’m Claudio Marcus, and I’m head of strategy for Comcast Advertising.
Sean Cunningham 03:26
Terrific, Peter.
Peter Olsen 03:36
Hello, Sean, and my fellow esteemed colleagues. My name is Peter Olsen. I’m President of Ad Sales at A+E Networks. I’m thrilled to be here with you all today.
Sean Cunningham 03:45
Good. And I’m very happy to ask Kavita.
Kavita Vazirani 03:48
Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me. I head up research insights and analytics at Disney supporting our Disney media and entertainment division, bringing together content and ad measurement working on our streaming business as well. Really excited to be here with all of you.
Sean Cunningham 04:08
Welcome back, Kavita, we are thrilled to have you back. We have known you as a colleague for a long time. This is a relatively new position. If you want to just take and ask everybody the same question. What are you most excited about as we look at August 2022? What’s evergreen for you? What are you most excited about as you think about challenges in your job right now?
Kavita Vazirani 04:33
Yes. As some of you may know, I took a year off to be with my family and it was interesting to see all that was happening in this industry. We’re at this time period where there’s a huge shift happening and the opportunity with Disney, which has just such a depth and breadth of content and assets. I just felt this is a critical time to be in the business and evolve in the future of measurement, evolve the way that we think about how television is consumed. It’s super energizing. So I’m really excited to be back with such a great brand.
Sean Cunningham 05:18
We’re excited you are back. Peter, similar question. There were things again that were evergreen about this business and there were things that are new. What in August 2022 are you excited about?
Peter Olsen 05:29
That’s a good question, Sean. I’m a three decade veteran now of this industry. It is an interesting time playing off what Kavita said. I’ll use this analogy of…I think that when the sports leagues have it, right, they’re always willing to challenge old rules and introduce new rules to make the game better. I think we have an opportunity right now with all the changes out there to change the rules on measurement to make the industry better, to essentially make the game better for all of us. That’s what excites me is, can we get this industry into the 21st century? To be honest with you, because part of what we do is living in either the 20th, or possibly even the 19th century, if we’re quite honest. So that is exciting, because we can make it better for our business, for our shareholders and everything else, and also kind of have the business in a better place for those that are coming behind us. That is very intriguing to me.
Sean Cunningham 06:27
I like the analogy, too, that works for me. Claudio, I’m going to ask you the same thing again, there are things about our business that are always terrific. And what’s got you excited in August 2022?
Claudio 06:39
Well, I think it’s really the evolution of TV into a much richer medium, right? With respect to advertising, we now have data-driven linear, Video on Demand, addressable TV, CTV, OTT, etcetera. But really, it’s a set of advanced capabilities that have really come together and evolved over the last few years. What I’m most excited about is that now we’re starting to incorporate these new capabilities into measurement. It’s important to do that, because we’ve advanced a lot of new capabilities that bring new possibilities for marketers. We need to be able to integrate these things together with the traditional linear as well, so that we can demonstrate the added value that all these capabilities bring to the table and properly account for them. I think that what I’m most excited about in one word is collaboration, because measurement is a team sport.
Sean Cunningham 07:35
Yeah, I think that collaboration is key. Laura, I’m going to ask you a similar question from where you sit, as you know this business, and we continue to advance and grow in this business. What’s the most exciting thing about what you get to do every day right now? August 2022?
Laura Grover 07:52
Yeah, this is probably a little bit of a build on what Claudio was saying but the world is evolving, and everybody is innovating. As a consumer, it’s delightful because you can watch any program you want, however you want to. Then for all of us, we get that benefit. But then there’s the aspect that it also creates this challenge for us of – how do we measure everything, and bring it all together? So what’s exciting to me is that puzzle of figuring it all out and making sure that the measurement pieces with all of the innovation that’s continually happening in our industry fit together.
Sean Cunningham 08:30
I think that’s right, and with that in mind, I want to jump into some questions today on a round table. I want to step back and think about the marketers’ view. At the VAB, we always take the marketers’ view of things. We were thinking about the marketers’ dashboard, and we’re thinking about the marketer being able to look at metrics with its largest levers. When I’m talking about the largest lever, I’m talking about metrics for multiscreen TV in the context of – what are the big indicated metrics? When we think about a marketer, looking at their metrics for Google, YouTube, their metrics for Facebook, metrics for Amazon, at one point, what might be their metrics for Netflix? And certainly their metrics for multiscreen TV. We hear that TV’s got some catching up to do vis a vis some of those large digital platforms. In terms of metrics, what do you do from your intimacy with marketers in your knowledge of metrics? Let’s start with the big picture. What do you think is missing right now from the marketers dashboard about multiscreen TV that you’re excited about them being able to see in the near future? I’ll start with Kavita on that one. What do we need to prove? What is multiscreen TV need to prove to the market around a big dashboard perspective?
Kavita Vazirani 10:03
Yeah. I have three things that I strongly believe in. First is outcomes, and outcomes in a broad sense. It could be as simple as driving awareness, or it could be as complicated as closing a sale through a website. So outcomes to me is really important, and how do we understand how does the marketer measure the return on investment? Is it reach? Or is it perceptual KPIs like awareness and consideration or more behavioral KPIs, like, foot traffic or site traffic? To me outcomes is big. When I was a marketer, that is what we looked at on a daily basis.
Number two, I think, this is where premium content and multiscreen TV has an opportunity. Proving not just the short term impact of multiscreen TV, but the long term impact. Oftentimes, whether it’s an attribution study, or just a campaign effectiveness study, you’re looking at what happened in a four to six week campaign time period. Which, for a brand that’s trying to sell cars, let’s say – you don’t make a decision about buying a car in that four to six week campaign periods. There is a long term halo that we provide, that I don’t think is always captured. I think measurement truly needs to figure out how we do that. We’re constantly in conversations with clients around that.
Then this value of premium content, right? We know there’s a difference. We know there’s a difference between, consumption of content when you’re watching a YouTube three minute on YouTube clip, versus when you’re super engaged with premium content. That is a value that you can’t get anywhere else. Then on top of that, as multiscreen TV evolves with investment around data, investment around technology that allows you to go national, global or local, I think we have a ton of opportunity in terms of how we deliver on those three things of outcome – long-term value, and the value of premium content, which I don’t think anyone else can provide.
Sean Cunningham 12:42
I think those three are really important. I want to ask that question to each of you in terms of your perception of the marketer dashboard, and things that we’d love to prove. Laura I’ll ask you to jump in next. Is there things that you want to add to Kavita’s list, which I think is an excellent start?
Laura Grover 13:02
I am fully on board with everything Kavita said there. To me, what it comes down to – what is missing from the TV dashboard – that is there for other channels is options of what you’re looking at. That really speaks to this idea of let’s go beyond opportunity to see and look at these other metrics around actions that people are taking and the outcomes of what people are exposed to. I think that is certainly a key thing and action, again, could be a spectrum of things from your mid funnel and your search activity all the way down to actual purchase. So there’s a lot that falls into that bucket.
The area I wanted to touch on that hasn’t been mentioned is I hear consistently from our clients that they’re struggling with being able to pull everything together for that holistic view. That becomes really important when you’re looking at incrementality of your audiences and being able to see where you can find that new reach versus building frequency among that audience, that core audience. That’s a tough one, because the platform’s are multiplying every day, but being able to have that holistic view of how you’re reaching your audiences is critical.
Sean Cunningham 14:21
Got it. All right. It gets harder as we go on, because there’s great stuff that’s getting tacked to the dashboard here. Peter, I’m going to ask you next, what else would you put on the dashboard? What would you like marketers to see?
Peter Olsen 14:33
Well, I’m going to build off my two previous colleagues. Everyone I talked to about the agency and client, they all acknowledged it is actually impossible right now to effectively plan for the modern world of television, you can’t do it. It’s that measure, you just can’t put it together. It’s some element of art and science going on. It would be helpful for all of us if we can get to a point where we actually have a truly effective way to both count and value to Kavita’s point, what’s the difference between this view and this impression and this view and this impression, because I don’t talk to many people that think they’re all the same. But we don’t really have a truly effective across the industry way of acknowledging what that is. That’s part of this journey is we’re trying to get to a point that can build our value propositions.
The thing I’ll add is – even your question was interesting, Sean, which was what do marketers say? You put 50 marketers together, you’re gonna get probably 50 different answers on some of these questions. But I would break it down. Even if you break it down by what we will call our legacy clients and the emerging economy and direct to consumer type plans. It is night and day, that conversation – to play off what Kavita and Laura was saying. If you can turn the conversation more to effectiveness outcomes, what builds my business, it’s a much better dialogue. I would call it some of the legacy questions of all the things TV used to be able to do. Now they can’t. We can turn that conversation around. Claudio started to list it, like there are so many capabilities now, from reach to effectiveness to CDP addressable shoppable, it’s all there. What we need is a more, I think, honest dialogue and dialogue rooted in some just a better foundation of what we’re building off of to actually get – the dialogue should be around the solutions, not around the rulebook and some of this stuff. Let’s solve this problem to get back to solving the true marketer needs to build their businesses. When their businesses grow, all of us are happy.
Sean Cunningham 16:47
Right. Claudio, I’m going to give you the toughest job to see if there’s anything to add to what’s been three great perspectives on, what the marketer wants from us on the dashboard, and what we can give.
Claudio Marcus 17:00
I’m going to flip it a little bit to sort of what the large digital ad platforms have done quite a job, which is associating their own ad exposures to their own response metrics. But in doing that, they’ve also either have ignored or taken credit for much of the upper funnel activity that generates awareness and interest in brands, products, and services. What I would add is that, I think it’s important for us to make those connections so we can show how TV and premium video actually impact other channels such as social, such as other outcomes that are more directly related to either, Kavita touched on this – either site visits or physical visits, and really be able to tie that through the funnel, and show the importance of having that very efficient reach that’s largely grounded on top notch premium content and the audiences, the large audiences that it attracts, but also be able to prove that TV can be used and optimized to drive and understand the impact of business performance. I think being able to tie all these things together in a mythical dashboard is really what marketers would love to have. We’re ways away from that. But there’s a lot of piecemeal work that is serving as the foundation to help us get there. I really do believe that we will get there in the next few years.
Kavita Vazirani 18:29
Yeah, I’ll just add that, I think, Sean, you’ve heard me say this, this continuum of measurement, right? You have so many consumer insights now, tools across the board, marketers have it, we have it, and we use that to plan really well, we do a good job of planning. We do an okay job counting impressions, right? There’s a lot of work in that area and a lot of noise in the marketplace around this topic of cross media measurement so that we count appropriately. But we’ve put this – making those impressions count, which is the impacts, the outcomes. That’s the part of the continuum. I think that’s the part marketers are focusing more on and yes, it’s different by category. But you know, we’re serving our clients and understanding what does each category of client need to make those impressions count and then develop solutions that help to accomplish that?
Sean Cunningham 19:33
Well, what’s gratifying to me – and Claudio said, as well – is that, some of this will take a bit, but there isn’t one thing that was mentioned that if the fix isn’t in, it’s not that far away with respect to the amount of work and investment platforms and things in our business that have been going on for the last 36, 18 months to address that level. If there’s, a gap to be closed, I know that collectively, your companies are on it. So my gratifying part about the first part of this discussion is we’re not talking about, somewhere, some time. We’re talking about things that we know, the behaviors there, the success is there, and we’re on our way.
I want to shift gears. Not to bring everyone into a tough spot, but economic recession is looming, these are cyclical, yeah, we know this. But the fact is with a lot of mixed indicators, right now, advertisers are needing to grow, despite some adverse economic conditions. Again, recessionary consumer behavior. What’s interesting about all our progress in the buy-sell, TV ad marketplace, is that sometimes institutional inertia can be one of our biggest challenges. I’m going to ask Peter, first. If you could change one behavior that our friends on the buy-side can occasionally get stuck on, and fall back into a mindset that says, “Well, this is the way we’ve always done it” – what would that change be for you? What would you be able to say, as we’re thinking about what, we got to grow when conditions are tough? It’s not time for the old helmet, what would you change?
Peter Olsen 21:20
Let’s start to shake things up a little bit. It’s good. Like, here’s some stuff that’s on our mind, right? Let’s just look at how the video landscape has changed the way consumers are absorbing our content. There are so many things that don’t make sense anymore. Daypart pricing makes no sense anymore. Different rules for what’s acceptable content on linear, cable – there are multiple sets of rules that are out there some new some old. Let’s evolve the whole thing, if what we’re focused on is, what is the most effective thing for the marketer, let’s just break down all of these old mores that exist that just don’t make sense anymore.
We spent a lot of time just thinking in our heads about – on one level, whether you watch it on linear on CTV, you could argue it’s the same thing, right? But it’s not because there’s immediate reach on one platform and a one to one slow build reach on another. We’ve got to figure out the most effective way to kind of bring the whole market together. But we can’t do that if we’re spending time on a bunch of antiquated, time-sucking activities that don’t work anymore. So what I would suggest is we all come together. Claudio, you said collaboration earlier. Let’s be honest about some ways we can collaborate to get rid of some of the old and focus on what is the future of our business? Because it’s never been better. Consumption is better, engagement is better, everything is terrific – quality, content, all of it’s great. And sometimes I feel like what do I do today? I spend time looking at a bunch of nonsense that doesn’t exist, shouldn’t exist anymore. So my suggestion is we get rid of the old and we focus on the new. Claudio, Laura, you guys can all agree with me or disagree with me.
Sean Cunningham 23:18
Laura, want to jump in?
Laura Grover 23:20
I agree. Yeah, the old that I hope to see change over time is the mindset of the role of the channel. That TV is purely a tool to build awareness. At a point in time, I think that was probably true. But consumer behaviors have changed, all of us watch TV and have a device in our hand. If you are exposed to an ad that speaks to you, you’re going to engage with that ad and search or go to that site. TV becomes a performance channel in some ways. I’d like to see people embrace that and think of TV as more of that awareness and can be for a lot more of that consumer journey and really motivate people to take action. I think that becomes critically important as you lead into this on the verge of being in a recession, because a lot of times marketers in that moment, they cut upper funnel, because anything that they deem is an awareness channel and focus on those immediate sales and those lower funnel tactics. I’m hoping that people see TV as something that can drive outcomes and continue to invest in it.
Sean Cunningham 24:40
Alright, Kavita, you’ve heard a lot of growth is going to be tough. There’s old behaviors that need to change. What would you add to what’s been said?
Kavita Vazirani 24:52
Yeah, I do want to change the daypart of this conversation. I’m totally with Peter, I’ve been in this industry long enough to be dealing with that. But I think I would add that we need to change the narrative from test and learn, to test, learn, and deliver. I feel that the scope of what we’re trying to solve for marketers, whether it’s from a cross-media measurement perspective, whether it’s from an outcome perspective, it’s so massive and sometimes you get lost in the noise of it all. It’s that saying – how do you eat an elephant? You take one bite at a time. I would really like to have the industry focused on what is that one year roadmap? What is that two year roadmap?
Let’s break it down and actually start to deliver on the promise of multiscreen TV, because Laura’s right. Yes, TV was viewed as an awareness channel. But we know it serves across the journey. We have many studies, many measurement attribution studies that prove that, but somehow, when it comes to the marketing budgets, it’s still okay, let’s cut away that brand spend, right. That’s really what gets consumers excited and gets consumers to buy a product. I just want to add, I think when you ask the earlier question, what excites me, it’s this opportunity. I think we have an opportunity with certainly the brand of Disney and all of the assets that we have to be able to start solving problems. I feel that we’ve been working on it much longer than I thought. So I think that’s the exciting part. I think we’ve got to deliver for our clients.
Sean Cunningham 26:56
Got it. Alright, Claudio, same environment, tough to grow. It’s time to drown some things where the dialogue may have been stuck in behavior that we’ve “always done.” I think we’ve heard some good ones, what would you add to that, in terms of things you would change?
Claudio Marcus 27:11
I would add the elephant in the room. That’s GRPs. I think gross rating points are something that served us well in the past when we didn’t have the richness of the datasets that we have today. But I think we really need to fully evolve to audience-based impressions, and with it, the ability to not just have an average reach and frequency, but actually understand how many people were reached once, twice, three times, etc. and be able to do something about it, as Kavita has pointed out. So the ability to monitor that on an anonymized, but individual basis so that we can deliver incremental reach, which makes the value of the investments in advertising work much harder, right? So that we can understand where we have diminishing returns relative to frequency. These are important things. Not going to happen if you’re stuck in GRPs and average reach and frequency.
Sean Cunningham 28:09
Got it.
Kavita Vazirani 28:10
Yeah. I think to that point, the GRP point, the beauty of the GRP, back in the day was that it enabled our CMOs and CFOs to understand, if I have 200 GRPs in the marketplace, I’m going to have solid impact, right? Now you shift to an impressions world. You go from what is that, you know, is one million going to drive impact? Is 10 million impressions going to drive impact? So there was a simplicity to GRPs. I think that’s why people still hold on to it. I think we’ve got to start to think about what that story looks like with impressions. It speaks to what all of us are talking about: understanding the consumer journey, understanding how measurement works, understanding what the client’s needs are so that you can slowly pick away at what is the right impression for launching a new product versus driving acquisition?
Sean Cunningham 29:23
That’s right.
Claudio Marcus 29:26
I would just add that again, you really need to couple it with a more granular reach and frequency, because delivering 10 million impressions against a million households is very different than delivering 10 million impressions against 100,000 households, right? That’s why we need to be able to decouple the average reach and frequency associated with GRPs and really get down really understanding the frequency distribution for a campaign relative to the total number of impressions. There’s a lot of good work going on here. But we need to sort of pack the bags on ERPs
Sean Cunningham 30:01
Yeah, I almost want to talk from a primal perspective about TV and in tough economic conditions. The marketers are going to make decisions about – more this, less that. And by the way, things are going to get thrown out of the lifeboat. That’s just the way it works in cyclical economic downturns. From two perspectives, just talk from the gut, probably less is more, but from what you know about long term work in this business and long term helping clients sell more stuff. If you were just going to talk about TV from a content and an ad platform perspective, what would be your argument to a marketer that – forget getting thrown out of the lifeboat – you get more. It’s actually more important in economic downturns to if not double down to actually increase spending on multiscreen TV. Peter, you want to take that one first?
Peter Olsen 30:58
I’d love to take that one. I like your angle there, Sean. There’s business school cases, there’s the brave clients that spend through recessions, they gain market share, their business benefits. We don’t need to be the ones pounding away on this. There’s plenty of evidence to support that case. These corporations are made up of multiple divisions – there’s the finance division and marketing and that is all a part of it. But I think what we try to approach with our clients is we are willing to be flexible and understanding. But I do think those clients that embrace and acknowledge that a continued investment in our businesses is ultimately going to be the right thing to do. We’ll lean in more. I think this is the time to listen to, be a bit compassionate about it. But overreactions to, I think, some short term economic challenges, it doesn’t really benefit anyone in the long term.
The one thing I’ll just add, Sean, people have been always talking about the coming recession. It has not been a strong television mark since before Thanksgiving, we have been in maybe not labeled recession, a somewhat soft-ish market. But I know enough through some earning reports that our businesses are holding up pretty well. So I think people are seeing the value of what we bring to the table. I still believe video is the top of the mountain and everyone’s acknowledging it. Look at some of the recent earnings reports – who felt the most, who fell the least. Some of the evidence is out there that the value of premium video, and whatever we call television these days, is coming true and coming through. I actually feel fairly encouraged despite that word, the “r-word” Sean, we don’t like that “r-word” but I understand where you’re going with it. We feel pretty good that we’re going to come out of this okay and that it’s going to set up what we think is a very encouraging few years that lie ahead. So it’s my optimistic view on all this stuff.
Sean Cunningham 33:14
To me, recession is the time when people can actually buy share at the end of the day. That’s when people can look at their categories and hope that some of their competitors turn the dials down. They’re going to buy share efficiently during that period of time. Anything anyone wants to ask from an ad from that unique place of just sitting there and saying, hey, from the gut – content and ad platform – this is why we get more in a recession. Anything to add?
Claudio Marcus 33:41
I would just say that there’s a temptation to focus more on lower funnel activity, but that’s very short sighted. In fact, some of the research, like Peter mentioned, provides strong evidence that people that invest during a recession not only capture share, but they capture significantly incremental share post recession. So in the order of 250 percent more than those that cut back, or spend more – or cut back or stop spending. That’s a very meaningful impact on the business. I would say resist the temptation to be short sighted, and instead focus on driving incremental share.
Sean Cunningham 34:27
Got it. All right, I’m going move to a couple of things. We’ve got a couple more big topics that I want to make sure that we get to. I want to start with CMM, which we all now know means cross-media measurement, and there are initiatives that are at work, and they’re grabbing headlines, and they’re coming soon. These are the initiatives where the marketer gets a look at the interplay between, again, the big levers – between Google, YouTube, Facebook, and multiscreen TV, they get to see how their campaigns perform, and they get to see deduplicated reach, deduplicated frequency and the interplay among those three pieces. That’s a part of what’s being built. During that, let’s start with a whole DNA of that. There’s this idea that in order to be able to do that, in order to be able to see the performance of the impressions of the large pieces of marketers budget deployment on a campaign basis, that you have to figure out a way that it’s critical to equivalised impressions. So equivalized, you know, so they can be looked at, in the same footing Google YouTube, Facebook with TV.
Yet, I think, and I believe that there’s a danger of low common denominator equivalised impressions. I will ask Kavita to start on that in terms of – it’s ambitious, and I know our marketers want it. But there’s a presupposition that we have to find a place where an impression is an impression is an impression. What’s the danger of sitting there and saying, well, we’re going to find a way to equivalence impressions?
Kavita Vazirani 36:10
Well, I think the danger is not a complete picture, right? And this is a point where we’ve been, and even how we’re structured within Disney to bring content and ad measurement into the same conversation, I think there is a lot of conversation around what ad measurement looks like. I think that’s where the danger comes in – okay, you know what? Google only talks about impressions, Facebook only talks about impressions, let’s go to impressions and equalize the impressions. But you’re missing a very important piece of the puzzle when you do that.
The more we can think about content and ad measurement together and challenge the partners that are in the marketplace, solving this problem. They’ve got to bring that piece to the forefront as well, because this group already knows that good content, good premium content delivers, not just short term, but long term value. And it does matter when you consume an ad during a premium piece of content versus if I’m looking at a video of how to cook something on YouTube, right? So you’re in a different mindset, and you’re in a different, you know, it’s almost like, am I being very transactional in the cooking mode, versus an immersive experience that you have on multiscreen TV, where you’re truly engaging with the brand. I think we need to just really challenge these measurement partners, to think about them holistically.
Sean Cunningham 38:03
Yeah, I think that’s right, Laura, from from where you sit in terms of, is there a danger of getting to a low common denominator, what would be lost based on the insights that your company understands, about impact and impressions and the TV and bringing that down to a low common denominator, what would be lost? What’s the danger?
Laura Grover 38:26
The danger is that all impressions aren’t equal. I understand that desire, you have to start somewhere. Impressions are uniform and can be measured. It’s a natural starting place, and it will evolve. Because you have to take into account that environment and that premium content. You mentioned my company, and I don’t know if everyone who will be watching knows what EDO does. But what we do is that we pull together exposure to TV ads, and then link that to search. We measure based on that action that people are taking after they’re exposed to an ad. Do they then engage with the ad and search for it? A great example of impressions not being equal is – Shark Week that’s just on air. Ads on Shark Week drive, I think it’s 49% more engagement than an average primetime airing. That’s a huge difference that you’re getting 50% more effectiveness out of every airing. When you don’t have that type of measurement and you focus just on impressions you lose that nuance of the of the content that something is airing during.
Sean Cunningham 39:44
Peter, I’m going to ask you a similar question then Claudio I’m going to pivot to a different one for you. So Peter, from your experience in terms of your content, your interplay with clients and you understand the desire of what they’re looking for, with cross media measurement tool. If you will, coming to a low common denominator, what are they going to lose on their business? What’s the practical effect of starting from there, and why do you think that might be problematic?
Peter Olsen 40:15
Kind of builds off what Laura just said. I think if you try to claim everything’s the same, you are going to miss out on the things that drive better results, better engagement, better attention, all the other things that we’re all talking about. My guess is where we’re going to get to as an industry, and this is going to be a challenge for everyone to figure this out. Cost wise, time spent on all this, we’re probably going to need a common counter of some sort. To play off Kavita and Claudo’s points, it’s going to be impressions based, not GRP. Then we’re going to need divisional partners to tell us what’s worth more. Because I don’t think one company is going to do both in my eyes, I think that that’s going to be too aspirational. We need a I would call it one on one. This is just to get to the point where we can actually see these things together on the same scorecard. Are we going to need to have third party companies help us make the case that this is worth more than that. I love when we use third parties because it actually takes away the Google Facebook great my own homework thing.
I think it’s very helpful for us as an industry when we have a third party verify that this is worth more. I think we’re going to get there. That’s my take. We’re probably going to end up working with multiple partners depending on what clients want, categories want, I don’t think it’s going to be one size fits all and that’s okay. That’s going to bring its own challenges. In terms of I don’t know what an upfront looks like, in terms of an inflation number when you go down five different paths that don’t really relate to each other. But I think as an industry, if we can get to a more bespoke what’s right for that client solution, and again, to stuff it all into one box every year – that just doesn’t make a lot of sense. So we need a lot of help on that. We need these reviews to stop coming in and saying we gotta roll your pricing back, whatever X percent. Those things don’t work. If we’re trying to advance the industry towards effectiveness, stop talking about GRPs and rollbacks and this other stuff on the other side of the coin. So I would say as an industry, we have to move forward with effectiveness and outcomes being the primary focus we have is making money work the best. If we can get there, we all benefit.
Sean Cunningham 42:45
That’s right, effectiveness and outcomes. Claudio, I’m gonna ask you to write a spec for me. And that is, when we’re talking about this goal, this tool that’s trying to be built. And it’s this, what do you think needs to be understood and calculated into any tool that aims to mix the DNA impressions of multiscreen TV and equivalent of them with other instruments, how would you write the spec? What would you say you have to do for multiscreen TV?
Claudio Marcus 43:13
I think where I would start is, as Laura said, it’s an admirable goal to understand reach and frequency across media channels. But in my view, and others in the panel as well, and probably even many marketers – some impressions are better than others. It really depends on what you’re trying to do. Things like content quality, the duration of the viewing, the type or the size of the screen, and there are other factors. But what I think is pretty clear is that the lowest common denominator does not give us that richness in measurement that we really need to understand how any individual marketer would qualify impressions to be counted for their own purposes, right?
I think, for example, I can skip an ad on some platforms, but still would be counted as an exposure, because I saw a few seconds of it before I chose to skip, or I could be scrolling top speeds in my social feed. Many of those ads will also be counted. That’s not that that is the kind of equivalization of impressions that’s not going to deliver a relevant understanding of the contribution. It really just serves to commoditize rather than understand the value of the different types of impressions, which in many cases have different roles and support different objectives. I think it’s really important that we avoid the temptation to start with just the lowest common denominator and really look to write a spec, as you outlined, that includes the things that differentiate the quality of those impressions and there are a variety of factors and I think it’d be summarized quite well in adding the admitted related metadata to each ad exposure, it will allow for marketers as well as sellers to essentially help quantify which impressions do you want to count relative to your business objectives?
Sean Cunningham 45:14
Got it. Alright, I’m going to pivot to one of our last topics. That is, if you will, a playbook that’s been written in real time. Kavita talked about outcomes as one of the first things that we talked about. We’ve seen over the last five, six years, there’s been a phenomenal growth of DTC brands in all forms of TV. Oover 300 DTC, advertisers are now spending $5 billion or more on TV advertising, which has been probably the greatest testimonial that you could point to. 300 new companies who have used TV to get big, if you will, every advertiser wants to drive outcomes, right, with their ad investment. Do you believe that these newer DTC advertisers are thinking and executing lately with TV differently? Are we at a point where we’ve got a class of advertisers that’s thinking about television in a different way than I don’t want to call them legacy advertisers, but people who are the non-DTC people. People who have been there, may have been long term brand builders and share builders. But is DTC bringing a new playbook to TV and what can be learned? Kavita, I’ll ask you that first.
Kavita Vazirani 46:30
Sure. I do think they’re rewriting their playbook. They started with this version of let’s look at television and it’s going to drive demand and we’re going to close the sale on our end. They saw the impact of that, I think, as their business got to a point of maturing to where customers were not coming in as often because you get the demand you get, and then flattens out a little bit. They’re recognizing the value of building a brand, right, building a brand because consumers have so many choices.
There’s so many DTC brands today for any category, and it’s competing with the traditional categories, to some extent. I do believe that they’re now rethinking. I spoke to a DTC company that said, we’re thinking about building an MMM model, which was not something that they had thought about, because it was all about, okay, I’m going to spend X, I’m going to get this many sales. I’m going to keep spending until sales don’t come in, and I’m going to spend where the sales are coming from
Now they’re recognizing there’s a value of premium content that is making them shift their playbook and I think that’s the exciting part even about for me to come here where, you know, I sort of learned in my first four weeks that we’re working with 100 different measurement companies that are helping us understand consumer behavior; that are helping us understand the value of multiscreen; helping us with counting differently and attribution. All the ways from counting impressions to making those impressions count. I think that’s so exciting to be a part of. So the playbook is evolving for sure.
Sean Cunningham 48:52
Yeah. Peter, do you want to jump in? Because I know you as well have had some pretty rich experiences with DTC clients. Do you see them thinking and executing differently? Do they have a different playbook? Is there something that everybody can learn from what they’re doing?
Peter Olsen 49:05
Yeah, I’ll sum it up this way. I’ve never heard the word “waste” from a DTC advertiser. I’ve heard “more customers.” Just the fundamental view of everyone that sees my ad as a potential customer versus some somewhat bizarre, antiquated thought that a person of a certain non-target, non-age could never buy my product – it just doesn’t make any sense. The world we’re in today and how psychology purchase behavior has changed again, going back to that energy should go into the entire industry. Marketers have the ability now through all the things we bring to the table. The fact that human beings are changing to get more people to want to buy their product. Don’t narrow it, widen it – widen the aperture because those clients – and I think DTC leans more this way – those that open their aperture more are growing their business and stealing share. That, to me, is the big lesson. Then there’s an excitement to – kind of what you were saying, Kavita – we can refine that more. But it starts with the idea that everyone is a potential customer. That to me is the energy that is going to build the businesses of the future. So that’s my take.
Sean Cunningham 50:29
Claudio, is there evidence to you that this cascading is going on? Where Peter’s talking about, the stimulation, widely thought awareness and things like that brought down. Do you believe in the evidence that that cascades down the purchase funnel? Does that work? Is that entirely right?
Claudio Marcus 50:47
I do think that the DDC businesses are kind of rewriting the playbook because they typically begin by investing in more targeted digital ad channels like search and social. That’s valuable in early stage, because it helps them improve their product and market fit. But what they realize is that they start to get diminishing returns because they’re narrowly targeting those who they think are the most likely to buy their products.
What happens is when they start to expand their scope to incorporate more branding oriented campaigns and more response driven campaigns by using a much broader efficient reach of TV and video advertising, they begin to really see the impact that it has on their full funnel outcomes. They can quantify the related impact on their businesses. Again, I think this is happening primarily because B2C marketers are amongst the most data and analytics driven of all advertisers. So the fact that they are finding value in expanding the reach in an efficient manner to drive impact on their business, not only in the near term, but also in the medium and longer run. I think that that’s the aha moment for b2c marketers. That is a valuable lesson for all marketers,
Peter Olsen 52:07
Sean, can I add one thing to that?
Sean Cunningham 52:11
Absolutely.
Peter Olsen 52:13
From a recent DTC client conversation, the data analytics that Claudio just spoke to was saying, “Hey, we’re not delivering very well on this particular audience segment.” What they did, instead of shutting down that audience segment, they went back and looked at their product line. They created a product line for that audience segment, put it in-market and started to reach more people. It’s just the spirit of entrepreneurs saying, instead of letting the data tell me I’m failing, let me go back and create something that’s actually going to help me. It’s just a very different way of thinking and they don’t put us in the same boxes is the way I would say it.
How can we best grow your business? The way I do it may be different, like we all do it differently, almost playing to our strengths, versus trying to fit everyone into one narrow, kind of strange target. If we can get the industry more in that direction, I think we just look at the possibilities. Don’t look at all the list of can’t dos, is what I would say.
Sean Cunningham 53:21
I could do this for another hour, but we’re going to be running out of time soon. I’m going to start with Laura. It’s time for some future casting, all right? We think about where we’re going from here. We think about the things that have been spoken over the last 40 minutes or so. There is so much in the works, and there is so much advantage to be gleaned and a lot to be demonstrated.
Is there something that when you think about your company, you’re particularly bullish about in terms of TV and we like any other major platform, don’t have aspirations of maintenance, we have aspirations of thriving, and thriving by billions more than we are currently. Are there things that you see that you’re bullish on you and your company that really do see TV, from a major lever perspective, that the fix is in? It’s just a matter of the demonstration. It’s just a matter of the change in behavior. It’s just a matter of the change of mindset, but the things that you see from your company that make you bullish on the idea that the fix is in?
Laura Grover 54:28
To me, where I see the evolution and I think, like I’m personally bullish, is the idea of just evolving away from a single currency standpoint, and advertisers want options. Where I see the future going and us moving is that people will transact with different networks and different party publishers, based on different metrics. It’s not going to be just impressions. It’s not going to be GRPs and that whole negotiation is going to look very different for each person. That’s part of your plan in your planning process. That’s where I see a lot of the evolution and change coming. I think it’ll be an exciting one. It’ll be difficult, of course, but I think it will be an exciting change.
Sean Cunningham 55:17
Thank you. Claudio, in terms of from what you can see from your vantage point, the intimacy with your company, its resources, and while you’ve gotten to see in touch, thinking about growth and billions in revenue, how do you think the fix is in? What do you want marketers to know about?
Claudio Marcus 55:34
I think the combination of the various forms of advanced TV and video advertising coupled with the great premium content and the efficient reach that premium content drives, will allow us to provide solutions that leverage all those different components and we’re able to measure them to really understand what’s driving what impact, what’s meeting certain objectives. If your objective is incremental reach, that’s a different thing, that we have a different type of set of capabilities to help drive that. But we now have a toolkit that offers a lot of different possibilities that better aligns with the needs of individual marketers and their business objectives. What’s really been lagging is the ability to measure the impact across all those different capabilities. I think we’re right around the corner from achieving that. That’s going to really be a major driver for the use of premium TV and video as not only an efficient channel, but an extremely effective channel.
Sean Cunningham 56:49
Got it. All right, Peter, a marketer you’ve had a long relationship with. You get talking about the aspirations of what sitting at your company with your assets and understanding his business and all the major levers he’s got, how do you tell him that the fix is in, in terms of your ability to, not only just, thrive and persevere, but to be a major lever that drives his business? What have you got that you know the fix is in?
Peter Olsen 57:17
Well, I’d say it this way. I think narratives start to get created out there in the ecosystem, and this narrative of television’s dying, and there’s these things out there, and the world’s collapsing. I would go the other way. I think premium video, and what we call television today is thriving has never been better. There’s more solutions that we could bring to the table, there’s more custom solutions we can bring to the table.
But everyone has to be willing to think differently, to embrace those solutions. What I would say is, go on a journey with us. Let’s have an open dialogue about what are you really trying to solve? What’s your real problem to build your business and let us try to do it. Again, I’m kind of beating this dead horse, but just stop. Stop with some of the old antiquated things, stop trying to this and that. Just be willing to be flexible. Share more of what you’re looking to do. Let’s put us to the test. I think the people on this call – throw us your challenges, let us come up with solutions and see what we can do. I give my colleagues on this call and other companies in our industry…I think there’s a tremendous amount of work being done to help marketers build their businesses.
Sean Cunningham 58:37
All right, Kavita, you had the first word, we’re going to give you the last. What is it that you understand about your assets, where you know that when you talk to a marketer, and they’re looking for real, raw, undifferentiated growth and you feel like, look, I’ve earned the lead lever to do that. How do you tell them that you believe the fix is in that you can assure that kind of growth for them?
Kavita Vazirani 58:58
Yeah. I would say we’re really focused on differentiating our place in the marketplace. The approach that we’ve taken with advertising has been very deliberate, right. It’s been grounded in years of learning, years of research and consumer feedback. On top of that, we have this benefit of 14 years of experience with Hulu. We added ESPN a few years ago, and we’re excited about bringing Disney+ AVOD later this year. So all of this really differentiates us in the marketplace. Our goal is to allow advertisers the right to select the desired path that meets their execution needs. I think we have unlocked the capability to work with us whether it is locally, nationally or globally. We want to be true partners that work to meet their needs.
Sean Cunningham 1:00:09
Terrific. And I want to thank all of you for being true partners. Unfortunately, that’s all we have time for today. So Kavita, Peter, Claudio. Laura, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you everyone for watching. If you haven’t, there’s still time to register for the daily sessions this week. You can do that on our website. We’re going to be bringing you the latest thinking and the key issues in measurement today, like differences between measurement and currency, methods of data collection and why they matter, identity resolution, data privacy, local measurement, and more. I thank you all, couldn’t have asked for a better start to our week and for our leadership roundtable. I look forward to continuing this dialogue and I look forward to all of your success. Thank you.
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