New Google boss calls for collaboration on cross-screen measurement as attacks on digital arise

Note to academics. The audiences are engaged digitally. They want to be digital not mass market anymore.
Mass market is noisy and non relevant.

Content creates brands value not reach.

Note to Micheal. The mass market is digital. Mass market is noisy, but very popular.

Brands don’t need value, they need customers. Mass market delivers customers.

Hoffman & Ritson were correct to question the state of on-line advertising which is woeful at present and downright annoying in many cases. Fairfax & MailOnline as examples use incredibly annoying adverts that hover on their front page- very off-putting and I think annoy readers. This seems to be happening all over the net especially with newspaper websites.
We all understand advertising is a vital part of publishing and support publishers efforts to finance and profit from ads. But in-your-face adverts work against their advertisers. Well placed ads are constructive. Elements like Fairfax’s annoying ‘opt-out’ videos which are usually some reporter saying the exact same that’s in the copy, but preceded by an advert put me off ever clicking on their video links and I know many others say likewise. Instead a fixed ad in place of their silly video would be noticed and absorbed.
Companies seem to ignore all the rules of advertising when it comes to the internet.

One significant reason why we have had virtually NO credible progress in Australia in cross platform measurement is because Nielsen, are contracted by both the IAB and OzTAM to provide so called currency measurement Surveys for both online and TV. They have a conflict of interest to keep the two measurement systems apart created by the industry bodies themselves. There is lots of talk but the most pressing and significant issue facing our industry goes unaddressed with no real light on the horizon.,

A professor denouncing the greatest shift in communication the world has seen……seems legit.

The problem isn’t the digital platforms, the problem is the agencies. With traditional media its a set and forget approach, digital is a full time management, test and research process.

Facebook isn’t to blame that Coles has a low number of followers as Ritson highlighted, thats the Coles agency understanding the audience and giving them content to engage them. Thats the equivalent of me being single, posting a boring personal in a newspaper with zero engagement and blaming the newspaper for being single!

Well you’re right to fear the scrutiny of academics. God forbid someone with no financial skin in the game beyond making salient provable points studies the cluster frack that is our current approach to media. Be afraid be very afraid.

The problem is not the agencies. It’s everyone. Clients, agencies, media and the platforms included. And especially the commentators. (I know, irony alert). They are all running scared and trying to bullshit their way out of the financial pain they are likely to face. Rather than solve a complex problem.

Audiences are choosing to avoid advertising in all its forms, but especially the digital, content and social marketing “tsunami of horseshit”. The promise of digital as an advertising channel is about half what it hyped itself. Social I’d argue closer to 25% of its ‘promise’.

Facebook’s latest campaign to sell its product is advocating reach and mass, not personalisation for effectiveness. I believe them. But if they are right, FB is just another place to interrupt a mass audience – it’s clearly not about followers, likes or targeting. It should be judged against the same metrics as other ads. Reach and frequency. Advertising recall and likeability. Effect on brand affinity. Effect on shopping behaviour. In that order. And in reverse order of importance.

The digital hype is being called for the BS it is. Even by its main proponents. The people talking about it seem to have no idea what brands and businesses actually want from their advertising, how to build brands or how and when to connect with target consumers. Content marketers seem to think they are so awesome at writing stuff we’ll clamber to read their wisdom. Ask Aaron Sorkin and JK Rowling how easy that is and back the ego off a notch or twenty. The traditional media guys are hiding in a cave somewhere hoping it will all blow over. It will. But there won’t be a TV ads industry left by the time they emerge.

We’d all do well to take one of Mark’s classes. Or read a book on marketing. It’s ok. An e-book is fine. The future is uncertain. And scary. What’s certain is that, as yet digital marketing isn’t the silver bullet. It’s not even taking the bronze. I’d argue its struggling to make the podium in the qualifiers.

We already have a cross media measure and it has been been available for years.

It’s called Roy Morgan Single Source.

Of course we’d welcome the industry to pick up the phone or drop us an email here at Roy Morgan.

Despite what many commenters have said, the biggest thing holding back cross-media measurement (and I note most myopically consider this to mean video) is that despite reaching adulthood this year, the internet audience (not a site, but the internet) is still measured monthly. Conveniently that is a very large number.

Much hard work is being done here in Australia to progress towards daily/overnight measurement. So let’s focus on daily measurement for the next twelve months, so that we then have data that can stand-up as a component of cross-screen measurement.

Hi John .

I just wanted to say that Roy Morgan measures the internet population and the long tail monthly already in addition to being able to provide daily measures through Roy Morgan Audiences. It’s frustrating that the industry chooses to ignore that these tools are in existence and instead seem focused on reinventing the wheel at additional time and cost to everyone.

Tim

Why is daily/overnight measurement the holy grail? As a marketer, in the absence of other metrics, why would a daily/overnight metric be at the most important metric to help me plan campaigns?

Isn’t daily/overnight only a metric because it is the maximum level of granularity available in a broadcast environment?

As a marketer, I am concerned with how many times my ad was seen over the course of a campaign, who it was seen by, in what environment it was seen and then ultimately what was the impact of the ad was.

Hi Hmmm.

You are right to be concerned. The industry has exclusively endorsed, a media publisher funded measure which struggles to deliver what you and the wider market needs. And we have seen in recent press the numbers the currency being reported are contentious.

I hate to sound like a 404 not found but the industry is not at all being collaborative with alternative and emerging vendors and in this regard it is actually a closed shop.

The bottom line is there is no real, genuine wider vendor collaboration in the digital industry only tapdancing and window dressing to avoid acknowledging the elephant in the room.

When the industry folks who are so passionately advocating the collaboration pick up the phone and or drop us an invitation to collaborate I’ll let you know.

I’ll certainly be more of a believer if and when that ever happens.

Tim