Ad industry needs to replace outdated TV audience measurement

Here's something we all know: Advertising measurement is outdated. Just scroll through the media headlines and it's impossible to avoid. An Olympics that saw both record consumer engagement and ratings declines. A high-profile dispute over box office numbers and streaming audiences. The Media Rating Council's Board deciding Nielsen's accreditation fate. This problem is hardly new. The media and technology landscape has completely transformed over the last few years—yet measurement remains outdated. Why? Because the advertising industry has not adapted and it's holding us back. It's time for the advertising industry to declare #measurementindependence. We can construct a better, more transparent future. And we need all our industry's builders—including Nielsen—to architect an entirely new blueprint. It's time for us to declare measurement independence, and build solutions that will serve all consumers, advertisers, publishers and platforms for the next century. Putting the consumer first "Putting the consumer first" is too important to become a hollow phrase. When companies depend on outdated advertising measurement, diverse and dynamic consumer behaviors are ignored. Meanwhile, consumer experience suffers with things like cluttered ad spaces. We should put people over ratings. If consumers can embrace layers of complexity, then our industry should too. If there are multiple viewing experiences, then we need multiple yardsticks. For example, we can work toward a universal identity to raise standards and give marketers new tools to personalize and optimize their campaigns across platforms and programmers. Interoperability, in a consumer-safe and privacy-compliant way, is the future of our industry, and the fastest road to measurement independence and a better consumer experience. In this fragmented landscape, we all understand different pieces of the consumer experience. So, let's make it whole. We just need to embrace new sources of identity signals and make data more accessible and actionable, because that unified picture will give us the ability to follow the consumer's lead. Encourage media innovation Any good marketer follows its consumer in constant pursuit of new innovation. But if we rely on outdated metrics, innovation in media slows down too. Old measurement incentivizes old methods—stifling modern approaches and creative risk-taking. Just imagine the media innovations or partnerships we’ve scrapped because we didn't have the measurement to celebrate its true value. Without a way to measure an idea's impact, innovative teams have a choice: stop developing new media experiences or build new measurements. Social and streaming platforms chose independence over a single metric because it enabled them to pursue consumer-led innovation. Now the entire media industry can do the same. Measurement independence frees up innovation. It will require collaboration with measurement and data partners who can measure success outside the traditional box. Fortunately, there’s a growing list of measurement and data partners who are ready to support the next generation of innovations—from content and commerce to cross-platform and publisher collaborations and more. Marketers want impact in today's terms Finally, advertisers and publishers are in search of improved measurement solutions. Because when they meet at the negotiating table, they depend on third-party measurement to help define value and impact. The reason is clear: Marketers want their impact in today's terms. Meanwhile, for publishers, the gaps in measurement are gaps in what can be monetized. Measurement independence will create more modern, transparent and reliable measurement standards. Interoperable data sets will produce better inputs, more ways to de-duplicate data and new methods to measure any KPI. With more comprehensive and trustworthy standards, advertisers can confidently shift from ratings to results and move closer to measuring what matters—impact. Its time to take action By declaring measurement independence we can build a new, global currency that reflects consumer behavior accurately and values content fairly. We can level up the playing field with more datasets and multiple yardsticks for multiple kinds of impact. NBCUniversal is in the process of assembling a full suite of interoperable measurement solutions that are as advanced, diverse, easy-to-use, and multi-platform as the ways people watch content. In this new era, more measurement options and collaboration will drive the future of content and advertising forward. Subscribe to Ad Age now for the latest industry news and analysis.

Ad industry needs to replace outdated TV audience measurement

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