Ratings Maelstrom
I love to listen to intelligent people really dig into a topic that they both understand and enjoy discussing, and this was panel was a joy.
MODERATOR:
Brad Berens, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief and Chief Content Officer, iMedia Communications, Inc.
PANELISTS:
Ali Mirian, Director of Product Management - Publisher Solutions, 24/7 Real Media
Carolyn Creekmore, Senior Director, Media Analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings
Alistair Sutcliffe, VP, ComScore
Tim Barnes, VP, Global Business Intelligence Group, Avenue A | Razorfish
In an evolving online marketplace, where new platforms are being developed every day, most marketers find themselves a bit lost. It often seems impossible to see even a hint of the horizon, because the here and now has completed surrounded you. Now imagine what that is like for the people who measure the effectiveness of all those new platforms.
While that was not the focus of this discussion at the start, it seems to be the direction that things went. When the moderator Brad Berens asked, what keeps you up at night, one response "what doesn't" really seemed appropriate.
While there were a number of concerns about the future landscape, the final solution seemed to be agreed upon by all: taking a deeper look at the data. Advertisers have got to learn to look deeper than ROI; they have to look at all of the steps leading to that ROI so that they have a better understanding of how those conversions evolved out of many different platforms.
Of course the response to this was, but media buyers are busy. And that raises a challenge. How do you begin to educate the buyers to understand each step and make it time effective. I have never believed that anyone should simply trust the report placed in front of them, they need to get their hands dirty and understand the metrics well enough to reject bad information when it is handed to them. And it does happen, because no system is perfect. (I'd love a response to this)
There were only 2 points at which I disagreed with what was being presented, and they focused on the same concept. One was a question regarding the need to evolve away from a ratings model, because it was out of date, and the other was a concept - prevalent among panel members - that they existed to help increase ad spend in the online space. This may not seem related, but for me both points focus on a perceived evolution away from TV. I think we've rounded that corner and are now coming full circle, to television being the primary access point for all things. In this sense I'm really only thinking of top advertising dollars from big brands, but that's an awful lot of spend. For the agencies, this should be a gold mind of true ROI advertising, but how do the metrics companies begin to evolve today, to deal with this merger?
