ANA is launching cross-media measurement with Kantar and Accenture

The Association of National Advertisers is launching its cross-media measurement program next year with a new name, Aquila, new partners and buy-in from the biggest digital platforms. Nearly three years in the making and sometimes controversial, the program is getting something of a fresh start, backed by consulting by Accenture and a calibration panel from Kantar Media. This brings Kantar Media, Nielsen’s leading TV measurement rival globally, formally into U.S. TV and video measurement for the first time. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs But Bill Tucker, the ANA’s executive VP overseeing the data/technology practice, digital supply chain industry initiatives and measurement for marketers, said Aquila is not out to create a new video trading currency. Tucker will head Aquila as a standalone entity. Aquila is for planning, optimizing, post-campaign reporting and outcome measurement, with the goal of enabling unduplicated reach and frequency capping across platforms. The leadership coalition includes Google, Meta, Amazon and TikTok, plus a founder’s coalition of mainly unnamed (except for Procter & Gamble Co.) advertisers. The plan is to have Aquila operational in beta by late in the second quarter of 2025, Tucker said, with a virtual identification system that’s fully privacy compliant and operates across platforms. That helps solve for the possibility, ever delayed, of Google eliminating tracking cookies from the Chrome browser, plus Apple and most other digital and streaming providers walling off individual viewing data. Executives of Meta, Google, Amazon and TikTok lauded Aquila in an ANA statement. And their involvement would suggest the platforms, widely called walled gardens for their resistance to allowing outside data tracking, will open up to allow the ANA’s virtual ID to operate. It’s a new take on what began in 2021 with the idea of pilots involving VideoAmp and Comscore. Aquila isn’t about displacing those companies, or Nielsen or iSpot.tv, Tucker said, but to provide planning and analytics that inform trading without serving as currency. Many details remain to be determined or released, including the size of the household panel Kantar will build and how it will be built. But Tucker said the panel would go beyond just filling gaps, such as measuring out-of-home audiences, from big data audience sources such as set-top boxes and smart TVs. The panel, and Aquila broadly, will be designed to allow for accreditation by the Media Rating Council, Tucker said. That would imply working off of MRC cross-media measurement standards, which for video allow for duration-weighted impressions, or paying based on the percentage of an ad that’s viewed. Media measurement blog Tracking TV, social and digital updates Click here Google, in particular, has argued for using the MRC’s two-second, sound-on digital video impression instead as the basis of cross-media measurement. Concern that digital platforms would exert undue influence on the ANA by providing most of the funding led the Video Advertising Bureau to drop out of the program last year. But Tucker said the TV and streaming are welcome to join Aquila, that TV remains an important part of cross-media measurement, and that funding also will come largely from advertisers. Only one advertiser, P&G, commented in the ANA’s statement. “The ANA’s progress is a step in the right direction to unify the industry to achieve a de-duplicated reach and frequency cross-media measurement solution that will enable marketers to deliver a better consumer media experience while avoiding unnecessary waste,” said Kanishka Das, senior director of global media, analytics and insights at P&G. He was marketer chair of the program’s founder’s coalition.

ANA is launching cross-media measurement with Kantar and Accenture

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