Brands and strategists split on TV measurement standards in Barb discussion
What do advertisers want from Barb going forward?
“I don’t believe that there should be a separate measurement,” said L’Oréal global media director Gayle Noah, referring to Origin and, more precisely, the fact that Barb data is not currently included in Isba’s cross-media measurement project.
“I would love to see everything in one place and allow advertisers to make the call on what is a view. What is a view for me is going to be very different to a direct-response advertiser. But let us make the decision. We understand the market enough. We understand what is right for our audience.”
Noah was speaking on a panel presented virtually as part of Barb’s Briefing for Brands event alongside Nicola Westwood, head of AV planning at UM, and Vicky Fox, chief planning officer at Omnicom Media Group UK.
The trio agreed that the language around AV planning and buying, as well as measurement efforts, has been complicated in recent years by the move to digital-based TV buying.
Lack of unified solution creating friction
“An impression is not an impact; they’re different. An impression is also not a view. That’s a different language,” said Fox. “It’s OK to put a plan together that has apples and pears, but you have to understand what the role of each of them is.”
Westwood added that, whereas AV used to be used to drive reach and awareness and digital to drive performance and conversion, “those two worlds are really coming together a lot more now and it’s harder to compare and work on a level playing field”.
She agreed that “one of the greatest challenges” in TV buying today is there is not currently a unified measurement solution. Barb’s CFlight measures linear and broadcaster VOD (BVOD); Origin is tracking linear TV, Meta and YouTube, but from a different data source as Barb; meanwhile, Google Cross-Media Reach data tracks TV sets.
“There isn’t one solution that accurately and holistically measures the whole AV ecosystem that we’re working in,” Westwood noted.
However, both agency planning leaders struck a different tone from Noah regarding their wish lists for Barb. Fox wanted improved BVOD measurement, while Westwood was most interested to see Netflix and Amazon Prime Video incorporated into Barb’s CFlight.
Ultimately, for an advertiser like Noah, all decisions come back to understanding reach and frequency, especially when overlaid on newer considerations such as attentive viewing time. “This is one of the reasons we are really vocal about Origin,” she added. “To get that total reach and frequency measurement across all of the different platforms so that we can make informed choices.”
Noah added that agencies will quickly need to upskill AV departments to account for more programmatic-led TV buying via popular streaming services like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix.
Standards required?
The difference in priorities between brand marketers who are enthusiastic about Origin and agency leads who are more cautious about its implementation was more apparent in another Barb session featuring media effectiveness experts and agency strategy leads. They expressed misgivings about using measurement data that is not standardised and advertising on platforms without a fully transparent view into the benefits of doing so.
As EssenceMediacom chief strategy officer Richard Kirk said: “When we talk about reach, it’s important we talk about a baseline for what we consider to be actual reach. Just because the ad has been served doesn’t necessarily mean that reached a human.
“I personally believe there is no point looking at how many impressions a campaign delivered that weren’t up to some sort of basic standard.”
Jon Waite, global managing director at Havas Media Group, agreed, expressing concern that audience delivery appears unimportant to digital players.
“Audience measurement and effectiveness are so intrinsically linked these days,” said Waite. “You have to have delivered an ad to someone. I think that gets forgotten about in the digital space. A big portion of where we invest in media doesn’t really care about the audience delivery part.”
Magic Numbers founder Grace Kite added that, whereas on TV it’s possible to understand a brand’s share of voice through Barb’s viewing data, this is impossible on platforms like Google and Facebook due to a lack of transparency. This has become a more urgent problem now that TV’s role on the media plan has become “a little more diminished” over time.
“It’s such a powerful thing, share of voice,” she explained. “It is really predictive — if you do buy excess share of voice, you do get growth. That’s a rule in marketing when everything’s very uncertain. Not being able to plug part of the ecosystem into it is a problem.”
‘Nobody wants to be precisely wrong’
For Barb, by joining the Media Rating Council (MRC) earlier this year and embracing its standards, the organisation has sought to be part of an international cross-media measurement standard — one that requires a standardised “opportunity to see” (100% pixels on screen for at least two seconds) to be considered a measured ad. Origin data does not universally meet such standards.
In working to meet MRC standards, Barb is already having to make concessions to advertisers by moving towards second-by-second, rather than minute-by-minute, audience reporting.
“It’s not an overnight flick of the switch,” explained Barb CEO Justin Sampson. “Barb data is woven into the fabric of daily life across lots and lots of nooks and crannies in our industry.
“There’s a challenge of getting used to the new data. We have to provide comfort that we haven’t gone to a system that is more granular but less accurate.
“Nobody wants to be precisely wrong. We need to enable buyers and sellers to adapt to changes in trading practice that are very likely to come with the switch.”