The survey, part of a syndicated offering by Advertiser Perceptions and not commissioned by any measurement company, comes as the market faces a sort of forced adoption of one new currency—VideoAmp. A contract showdown between Paramount and Nielsen is entering its second month, leading Paramount to no longer price deals using Nielsen data.
That means VideoAmp, previously the currency for under 3% of the roughly $80 billion U.S. TV market. Paramount, which opted to trade primarily on VideoAmp after its contract with Nielsen expired on Sept. 30, represents nearly 17% of ad-supported linear and connected TV inventory, according to The Score report issued in October by another alternative currency player (and Paramount trading option), Comscore.
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But that change may not be so hard for the market to swallow. About three in five respondents to the Advertiser Perceptions survey, taken in July, already said they have used alternative currencies for TV transactions in the past 12 months, and most found the results acceptable.
Overall, 49% of survey respondents said alternative currencies were just as effective as Nielsen, 36% said they were more effective than Nielsen and 15% said they were less effective than Nielsen. Marketer respondents were slightly more likely than agency respondents to say alternative currencies were as or more effective than Nielsen.
That seemingly runs counter to what a 4A’s committee reported in March—that new currencies “aren’t ready for primetime” when it comes to trading on age-gender demographics, though the Video Advertising Bureau, which represents TV networks, disputed that.
But “just as good” isn’t necessarily good enough when it comes to adopting new currencies, said Erin Firneno, senior VP of business intelligence for Advertiser Perceptions, because doing so involves added costs for more providers, data integration and reconciling new data with historical data. Nielsen rivals can probably see more hope in their roughly two-to-one advantage among respondents who said new currencies are more effective vs. those who said they were less so.