“One month ago, Linda Yaccarino [NBCU’s chairman, global advertising and partnership] said from the upfront stage, ‘We’re liberating you from what you all know is broken and finally breaking away from legacy,” Molen said. “And a month later, I’m here to tell you that we are already living in a multi-currency future.”
Well, perhaps not everyone. WPP’s GroupM issued a roadmap last week saying it will use iSpot, Comscore, VideoAmp and Nielsen One Alpha with some clients to “shadow Nielsen deals” but will still use legacy Nielsen ratings to write deals for more than a dozen of its largest clients, including Unilever, Nestle and Mars. Other agencies have cited reluctance by big clients to go beyond testing with alternatives to the dominant Nielsen currency, though Horizon Media has said it will write up to 15% of this year’s upfront deals using alternative measures.
In a nearly hour-long virtual presentation, NBCU and iSpot executives laid out a case from their test with 67 advertisers across 158 brands in 12 categories that their particular take on cross-platform measurement has paid off. The tests included training more than 800 users, about half on the buy side, Molen said.