Has Origin failed?

Opinion

Consultant Justin Lebbon asks, in light of the investment by Fifty5Blue, has the Origin cross-media measurement project failed?

It’s a fair question and recent news that Fifty5Blue is taking a minority stake in Origin, along with significant staff cuts and ongoing financial issues, makes it a valid one.

So, what was Origin trying to solve? The holy grail for advertisers: understanding audiences across digital and traditional media through a single measurement framework.

Did it achieve that? No. What did it build? After seven years and more than £60m of investment, it ended up with a panel of 2,500 homes measuring media including linear TV, YouTube and some Meta properties.

Exclusive: Fifty5Blue to take minority stake in Origin, enters talks with Isba

Was it any good?

According to multiple people I’ve spoken to, and as reported by The Media Leader, the data has received mixed reviews. Personally, I’ve never heard anyone say it fundamentally changed their thinking, uncovered game-changing insights or became indispensable.

What I have heard is things like:

“We don’t really know what to do with it.”

“It’s different to Barb.”

“It’s been sold to clients really well, and we’re working hard to make some use of it.”

I’ve even known advertisers who invested in the project early on and ultimately got very little back. Seven years. More than £60m. The impact has been underwhelming.

Just imagine what that level of investment could have done for Barb?

Ambition meets reality

What I’ve never understood is why the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) put so much weight behind an initiative that, in my view, was always destined to struggle. Five or six years ago I gave Origin about a three-out-of-ten chance of succeeding, largely because the economics of building and maintaining panels simply didn’t stack up. (Sorry to sound like Evan Shapiro, the US media strategist, there.)

That said, I do have some sympathy for the WFA. As I understand it, the intention was genuine. They wanted to build a proper cross-media measurement solution, and the methodology itself is widely regarded as sound. My concern isn’t with the ambition; it’s that their involvement represented a missed opportunity to strengthen the industry standards we already have.

I think the money and political backing should have gone into strengthening joint industry committees (JICs). JICs are under financial pressure globally, yet they’re one of the few things our industry broadly agrees on. They bring buyers and sellers together to agree how audiences are measured and what counts as an impression.

They’re not perfect. They need investment, they need to evolve and they absolutely need to include digital platforms.

Rather than creating entirely new measurement systems, we should be pushing the platforms that resist transparency to work within existing, trusted industry standards.

Here’s the reality. All audience measurement is wrong. Every panel is an estimate. Two different panels measuring the same market will produce different answers. That’s inevitable. The important thing isn’t finding the “correct” number. It’s agreeing how impressions are counted so everyone measures against the same yardstick. Consistency matters far more than absolute precision because marketers need to compare apples with apples, not apples with oranges.

The major digital platforms have never really wanted to be measured in the same way as traditional media. They want to control their own narrative. True cross-media measurement requires them to become genuinely transparent and embrace independent third-party measurement.

They have no commercial incentive to do that. We’ve watched this play out over the past 15 years. The platforms remain relatively opaque while their revenues continue to grow. Advertisers aren’t demanding enough transparency, so the platforms aren’t providing it. From their perspective, why would they?

In many ways, I think Origin has actually helped create the impression that the platforms are embracing transparency. Advertisers often tell me, “At least they’re trying.” That’s the frustrating part.

The answer isn’t building parallel measurement systems. It’s getting the platforms to work with existing JICs and holding back spend until they do. Of course, that’s unlikely to happen.

What’s made this even more uncomfortable is that the WFA actively supported and promoted Origin to advertisers. The industry’s representative body ended up championing a measurement solution funded by Google and Meta that, in my opinion, never became fit for purpose. From a PR perspective, it’s been a smart move by Google and Meta.

So what happens now?

Fifty5Blue taking a stake is an interesting move. Clearly, they’re betting that cross-media measurement still has a future. The ambition is to take Origin into other markets. Personally, I struggle to see how that works after what’s happened in the UK.

Building entirely new panels is hugely expensive, and the economics simply don’t stack up in most markets. If cross-media measurement is going to succeed internationally, I think it has to be built around existing JICs and MOCs rather than trying to replace them.

The one exception might be the US. Aquila (still a terrible name), the US equivalent of Origin, arguably has a much better chance because the economics are different, there’s no dominant JIC equivalent and the market is already a measurement free-for-all.

The lesson from Origin isn’t that cross-media measurement is impossible. It’s that building an entirely new ecosystem alongside trusted industry currencies, while relying on platforms that have little incentive to embrace transparency, was always going to be the hardest possible way to do it.

My final grievance is this: where are the voices from the IPA, the major advertisers who publicly supported Origin, the leading agencies or, frankly, anyone other than us gobby consultants?

A currency, or even a standardised way of counting impressions, only has value if the industry agrees how it works and gets behind it. We can’t have multiple competing solutions in the same market, each serving different commercial interests. That creates confusion, weakens trust and ultimately reduces the incentive for anyone to be more transparent.

The next few months will be fascinating. We’ll find out whether those influential voices step forward, whether advertisers continue to back Origin and, ultimately, whether the market still cares.

For all the good intentions behind it, I think it’s difficult to argue that, up to this point, Origin has been a success.