Nielsen plays defense as rivals press new measurement guarantees at NewFronts

Measurement giants faced off at the NewFronts yesterday, as Nielsen alternatives pitched a next generation in TV and video currency, while Nielsen contended you can't really trust numbers from its rivals' big data sets. Samba TV and LG Ads included testimonials from agency and client customers backing their alternative measurements or guarentees. Samba, which was tapped by Disney Advertising as a currency alternative earlier this year, built its NewFronts pitch around its “FlexFronts” approach of helping advertisers find viewers in connected TV they can't reach elsewhere. Samba touted its incremental cost per thousand (iCPM) guarantee that lets buyers pay only for CTV audiences that are additive to their linear TV buys. RSVP for Ad Age In-Depth: TV Pivot on May 24 and 25 at AdAge.com/TVPivot Samba boasted about its business with Hyundai, whose Chief Marketing Officer Angela Zepeda, said in a pre-recorded video during the presentation that the automaker has been using Samba’s total reach and frequency measurement tool to find “hard-to-reach cord cutters and light TV viewers" across Disney inventory. “What we found was incredible,” Zepeda said. “Among households containing adults 25 to 54, Disney’s addressable video contributed the highest percentage of unique reach for a campaign—higher than any linear network and over twice as high as the next linear network.” “We can create insights on viewership that really no one else has been able to create in real time, which is really I think giving the industry a unique ability to optimize billions of dollars of investment,” said Samba CEO Ashwin Navin in an interview. That’s enabled by relationships with more than 20 TV manufacturers globally, he said. Support for outcomes guarantees LG Ads executives noted that they’re also offering guarantees on incremental (to linear TV) reach and other business outcomes, such as app installs. The pre-recorded presentation included support from Omnicom Media Group Chief Investment Officer Geoffrey Calabrese and Dentsu International Chief Investment Officer Cara Lewis. “I think it will take some time to get there,” Calabrese said. “But I think any time you’re in the advertising or marketing world, when you’re able to guarantee the outcome or guarantee specific performance, people have to lean into that.” “I think there are clients that wanted to do that years ago,” Lewis said. “If we can get that going and do it for some of our clients today, there will be definitely clients excited about it.” LG noted its support for alternative measurement. “Unlike others in our space, we license our audience data back out into the TV ecosystem to help create a more open environment for planning and measurement with other third parties,” said Serge Matta, head of commercial for LG Ads Solutions. He didn’t name names, but Samsung is notable as a large TV manufacturer that doesn’t share its automated content recognition data with outside measurement firms. Matta noted recent LG deals with Omnicom Media Group and iSpot.tv. Nielsen plays defense Nielsen, not surprisingly, threw cold water on all the multiple currency talk and the device data behind it. Amenah Atai, general manager of digital and advanced TV for Nielsen, noted problems big device data sets have in identifying which people in a household are watching or getting proper representation of lower-income or minority viewers. A brands’ guide to the Nielsen turmoil “A lot of false and inflated metrics can come in when we are measuring machines,” Atai said. “It’s important to take machine measurement and correlate it with actual people.” That’s why Nielsen starts with a universe estimate and will rely heavily on its panel of more than 41,000 households to calibrate big device data sets as it rolls out its next generation Nielsen One cross-platform measurement. “Nielsen has been working with big data for almost a decade,” Atai said. “We combine that with a high-quality panel to correct for the biases.” She noted that ACR data, in particular, “is biased toward higher income and less diverse,” in part because data from smart TVs or set-top boxes doesn’t include the “rich profiles” that, say, Nielsen has from its panelists. “They say, well, we can project it to the census,” Atai said. “But without rich demographic profiles behind it, you won’t be able to project that accurately.” ‘Don’t worry,’ Comscore says Comscore chief marketing officer Tania Yuki didn’t get sucked into the battle, but instead focused on the market. She countered some of the “peak media consumption” narrative that has flourished of late, particularly amid Netflix’s recent subscriber downturn. “For those of you worried that stuff is starting to open up and that we’re going to see a pullback from media consumption or social-media engagement or video viewing, don’t worry,” Yuki said. Shareablee, the company Yuki founded that was acquired by Comscore in December, continues to see growth in engagement with social media content, with 71 billion social media engagements year to date and 211 billion social video views just in February on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. CTV households are up 24% since January of 2020, and total viewing hours are up 58% since that time, having started to grow again last fall after flattening for much of 2021, according to Comscore data. The average household now subscribes to 5.5 streaming services as of February, she said, up from 4.7 a year ago and 4.2 two years ago. She also noted that heavy social streamers are also heavy CTV viewers, along with surveys showing that people are interesting in buying from brands whose values align with theirs. That set up discussion of a new product—Comscore Total Digital—combining digital, CTV and social-media measurement.

Nielsen plays defense as rivals press new measurement guarantees at NewFronts

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