TV ad measurement was supposed to be entering a cleaner multi-currency era. Instead, the industry is dealing with a market where the main currency and its challengers are increasingly not measured by the same yardsticks.
The latest sign is a new initiative from the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement. At last week’s CIMM Summit, the trade body said it is forming a Strong Foundations Implementation Task Force to strengthen accreditation and create a neutral framework for currency requirements. CIMM managing director Jon Watts laid out the plan on stage on September 23.
Why the existing standards aren’t enough
The Media Rating Council already manages accreditation, and the U.S. Joint Industry Committee was built to certify currencies and set baseline requirements. But participation has become uneven.
Over the summer, Nielsen — for its Nielsen One system — and VideoAmp pulled out of MRC accreditation. Last week, Comscore, iSpot.tv and VideoAmp renewed their U.S. J.I.C. certifications, while Nielsen has twice opted not to submit for J.I.C. certification.
Nielsen’s position complicates the shift
Nielsen remains the market’s default baseline, and the more distance it keeps from alternative currencies, the harder it is for buyers and sellers to replace it. The result is tension rather than alignment.
“We can’t get to a multi-currency environment until you can look at it more apples to apples,” said Brittany Slattery, CMO of OpenAP, on stage on September 23.
That frustration is practical. Over the past two years, Nielsen has changed methodologies to fix panel gaps and incorporate big data. Those shifts have forced networks, agencies and advertisers to recalibrate audience estimates and valuations without a clear view of how the changes affect audience counts.
Buyers are not waiting to use alternatives. Versant-owned CNBC uses Cogent as its currency, and Omnicom-owned Initiative uses VideoAmp for audience buying across a large client base.
What media buyers should do now
For marketing and agency teams, measurement consistency has become a deal issue. Helen Katz, EVP of research at Publicis Media, said the next phase of measurement maturity is less about the complexity of any single data set and more about the ability to tie data sets together. That only works if providers disclose methodology changes early enough for buyers to model the impact.
- Ask every measurement partner to disclose accreditation status, panel inputs and methodology changes in the same comparison format.
- Lock currency definitions and recalibration rules into client and network deals before budgets are committed.
- Track the CIMM task force, but don’t wait for industry consensus to clean up internal audience data.
CIMM says it will seek participation from other industry organizations and is still in early stages. The timeline is explicit: if the group has not made significant progress within 12 to 18 months, it will disband.
Source: Digiday
