How do you solve a problem like measurement? Media buyers speak about the future of Nielsen
For a number of months, Australian publishers have endured discussions with the IAB’s measurement company, Nielsen, about flaws in its metrics. But what do agencies think of the solutions? Mumbrella’s Zoe Samios speaks with some of Australia’s media agency leaders to understand the influence of Nielsen data on trading decisions.
It would be hard to find a publisher in the Australian media that has had no qualms with industry measurement solution, Nielsen, in recent months.
And while tensions have been stirring long before this year, the past six months have been particularly testing for the company, which first announced its partnership with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in 2011.
It’s been a long few months of discussions between Nielsen and publishers, but what do the buyers make of the solutions?
At the end of the day, we can all moan as much as we want about how unfair the Nielsen standardisation is and where the holes in the methodology are, but the far bigger issue when it comes buyer strategy is trading deals. Media agencies are increasingly steering their buying decisions based on annualised trading deals that maximise return to the buyer (not the brand they are agents for), both at agency and holding group level. Regardless of the audience relevance and fit for a campaign that a small to medium sized publisher may offer, the reality is that they won’t even be considered without a trading deal in place in the majority of cases. So whilst the debate about Nielsen methodology rages on it is really only relevant to the very thin, top slice of the digital publishing community and is not representative nor relevant for sales/buying outcomes for the vast majority of the industry.
Facebooks definition of a view is 3 seconds
Hi ‘uh’,
Thanks for flagging. It seems as though I’ve made an error. Nielsen’s definition of a view is less than one second. I have amended.
Zoe – Mumbrella.
The advertising trade in both Australia and the UK only ever seem to moan about industry challenges without ever providing solutions.
You bemoan the fact that one single measurement provider cannot give you everything, but then in the next breath state you should NOT be using a single source? Which is it?
There are gaps for obvious reasons: certain publishers not wanting to be measured apples to apples against other publishers, cookie challenges, GDPR restrictions now, and general lack of understanding in this ad / martech space.
I think I will just stand behind the stumps with both arms outstretched. The ball you lobbed up never came close to landing on the pitch.
And to answer your headline … accept that you will never solve all the problems, but never stop trying to improve.
Then get a dozen or so of the top audience measurement thinkers and regularly get them all together and thrash out the issues, come up with potential solutions, implement them, and then get everyone in the room to validate and cross-validate the data or start again. And accept that for not everyone will be happy and there will probably be some casualties on the way because they simply don’t like what they see. None of this is easy – but Australia is leading the world.
Kudos to Gai and her compatriots.
Google Analytics, anyone?
Well who is the dummy now?
GA is a website usage analytics package. And a very powerful one at that.
What the industry is after is independent third-party audience measurement of total online usage, de-duplicated across platforms, devices and time. I realise you won’t know what that entails, but while GA is fabulous for a publisher to monitor and analyse their traffic, it doesn’t cut the mustard.
Name a few systems that internal marketeers can use?
Or are you insinuating that only 3rd parties can access tools for intel and inside can’t?
Media Buyers will shrivel up over the next 5 years.
Do your buying internally. Media Buyers want their cut first. Will Media Buyers even exist as 3rd parties in 5 years time? They shouldn’t do if you are a savvy marketeer client side.