Big pieces of the ecosystem it seems are never going to be integrated with the whole, such as Samsung. Why?
It's like the wild west. You don't know whom you're forming an alliance with, why you're forming an alliance with that person, and most importantly, it's hard to say if I form an alliance with someone where am I going? What is the state of my partners, and will they be around three to five years down the line?
I think this industry—especially measurement—needs more of a solution like, you know, like what Elon Musk did with Tesla.
In the past, the research agencies were supreme. They basically decided the methodology. There was respect for science. There was respect for statistics.
In a lot of countries around the world, you still have TV measurement systems that are led by science. You don't see it led by a broadcaster deciding that I'm going to go with iSpot. I made the decision and that's it. So I think it's the fact that you do not have a strong research body in the center driving that conversation. Instead, you have the broadcasters or the publishers, along with associated technology companies, making these claims.
In other countries with more centralized control, like the U.K., it seems to work better and cost less, right?
In India, for the longest time, you've had a single research body that drove it. In China, you of course have the government involved.
One thing that has always struck me about the U.S., it has one of the most sophisticated content markets and one of the most basic and backward TV buying and measurement markets in the world, period. There are developing countries that have better research methodologies for solving this problem than the United States.
What else is holding things back?
There’s one view that says that these privacy laws should be focused on. And I think what's happened in this debate is the people in the room making these decisions are not always representative of all stakeholders. We’re probably the only agency holding company that sits in many of these places. Often what we find is that there are all the big tech guys, and then there is us, and there might be the [Association of National Advertisers] or maybe the IAB. But you don't find big companies sitting there at the table, which I think would make a huge difference, because there's a distinction between the ANA sitting there as opposed to let's say, company X and a very powerful CEO or CMO.