Mamamia will no longer use Nielsen’s ‘materially incomplete’ Digital Content Ratings
Women’s lifestyle publication Mamamia has announced it will no longer use Nielsen’s heavily disputed Digital Content Ratings, and will instead “provide open access” to its third party analytics for its clients.
“It’s unfortunate that as an industry we still can’t accurately measure cross-platform content and advertising audience reach through one endorsed measurement system,” said Jason Lavigne, CEO, Mamamia.
Well done to Mamamia for taking a stand. There will no doubt be many more who follow suit.
Throwing your toys out of the pram because Nielsen won’t count your zero second views as reach?
Mammamia!
@Big baby we’re firmly on the record as saying that we absolutely don’t support the measurement of zero second views, and in fact we additionally support a two second qualifier on written content reach also, so it’s possible that you misunderstand what’s driven our decision.
We support and are in favour of fair, accurate, but critically also full measurement – that’s representative of all the places agencies and clients can access media brands’ commercial-isable content.
It’s scandalous how Nielsen is able to get away with gouging publishers for providing these hopelessly inaccurate numbers with the IAB’s blessing.
… I was a media agency I would drop Mamania.
Who in their right mind would believe proprietor claims that have no semblance of verification.
I suppose direct advertisers won’t know the difference and will believe what they care to believe.
to name a few services that publicise analytics data without verification:
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Instagram
Pinterest
Sooo, 95%+ of the digital advertising industry
… each of those entities report only on themselves.
Where is the picture of the total market?
How do you combine them to get campaign results?
Media agencies are the mortgage brokers of the media world: Trusted advisers to some; parasitic middle-men to others.
@I know that if…
Google Analytics is the most universally used analytics platform globally, it sits on virtually every website in the world, and it now de-duplicates at a device level.
It also uses logged in users and device level ID’s – so what’s not to believe?
It’s worth remembering that the industry places it’s trust in Google for ad serving through Ads360, and programmatic via Adwords and Adsense, amongst many other products.
These things are built on the same backbone as Google Analytics, so why if an agency/client is comfortable with believing the serving data around reach, frequency etc be any different to the same company’s analytics data?
We have said that we are in favour of complete transparency, and as such will happily show agencies, clients, the media, the IAB our GA, 3rd party analytics, and de-duplication methodology.
Pure example of the issues in our industry, you never get what you pay for yet the price tag is high.
Look at CBS and Nielsen in the US
If Mamamia is reading this, is the 6.4m off-site reach de-duplicated or does it represent you simply adding your total audience reach from FB/MSN/Apple News together? If it’s the latter then I think it’s fair to say this should be an included caveat, particularly if you tout your audience as super fans who would be likely to consume content across multiple channels.
Hi Jack
It’s a good question, and very much an included caveat.
For the record, we supplied a de-duplicated unique audience number of 5.7M in our original press release (that the above article is based on) alongside the gross website and platform audience numbers that are quoted.
So our gross number was 9.5M (3.1M onsite + 6.4M offsite as quoted above), and this reduced to 5.7M on de-duplication.
While we were surprised to see the gross quoted without the de-duplicated number, we understand that editorial decisions get made for various reasons, and that there is obviously significant industry pressure from several angles on this subject.
We agree that de-duplicated is the most relevant for client and agency decisions particularly of course around reach focussed buys.
We are not trying to make a big industry-wide comment by this, we are simply doing what’s right to accurately and factually represent our business and audience size, having had it severely inaccurately misrepresented for many years.
We have ‘played nice’ to be part of an industry-wide measurement system that vastly disadvantaged small to mid-sized publishers, and until it changes, for us it’s just a case of enough is enough.
A few points that I personally hold as true:
1. No individual medium can or does measure everything. It would be financial suicide. For example, TV has never measured pubs and clubs – estimated at around 3% Why? Because it would cost a fortune. OOH doesn’t measure, for example, food halls. Why? Have a guess based on the above. Radio doesn’t measure community radio stations. Not all magazines and newspapers are measured. Not even all cinemas are measured and they are the easiest to measure. 100% coverage is desirable but not essential, and in every medium I have worked in it is completely unaffordable.
2. Measuring video with a 0-second threshold is just plain loopy. The IAB did the right thing by insisting on the 2-second threshold. As we all know a 0-second threshold drives up the Unique Audience a lot but barely moves the dial on time watched. So I am pleased that Mamamia supports the 2-second threshold (both externally and internally I hope).
3. Online (let’s not call it digital anymore – most if not all media are digital now) is the hardest medium to measure by a long shot. As soon as you build an SDK, get a panel, tag up (or whatever) to cater for the latest and greatest improvement, deploy it and then go live … it is already out of date. Unlike media such as TV there are little if any regulations and standards meaning that lead-times are virtually non-existent. Imagine if each TV station used different transmission systems.
4. Just because you can see traffic on your server, doesn’t mean that your numbers are AUDIENCE. They are TRAFFIC. Remember that AUDIENCE TRAFFIC. In fact TRAFFIC >>> AUDIENCE. If the audience is not right then there is no chance of getting reach and frequency right. And as unpalatable as some people find it, advertisers want to understand how many people have seen their ad and how often, as it is probably the most important marketing metric that influences the annual marketing and advertising budget.
5. I still find it surprising how many online publishers use their monthly UA as the lead metric for a medium that is instantaneous. Advertisers want to know how many people are likely to see their ad, not how many people spent at least one-second on a website in the past month. That is just creating an image of a really big target – but one that an advertiser has bugger-all chance of hitting.
6. I agree that “It’s unfortunate that as an industry we still can’t accurately measure cross-platform content and advertising audience reach through one endorsed measurement system”. Such a system requires a collegiate approach over a long period of time with as many players as possible participating (media owners, research companies, industry bodies, sellers and bodies) as well as sharing their data and having deep pockets to afford it. Quite ironic when you think about it.
@john grono A positive step towards an industry-wide, universally embraced measurement approach would be to open-source the measurement methodology. Every aspect of it – every step, every line of code – should be made public and open to scrutiny. It’s unreasonable to expect everyone to join in and play nice within such an opaque system especially when sites like Mamamia and other mid-tiers publishers are being systematically disadvantaged.
It would be great to hear from brands whether reach & frequency continue to be “the most important marketing metric(s)”. I suspect there’s a lot more emphasis on performance.
Hi Leon.
In a utopian world I would agree with you.
Gai Le Roy has done a sterling job assembling the IAB Measurement Council which now has around two dozen very knowledgable members from small publishers to large publishers. Any IAB member can apply to join the Measurement Council, or indeed any other of their Councils.
We meet monthly and wrestle with the big problems. We ask difficult and hard questions of the preferred supplier. We’re not always happy – but that is our job. The supplier would probably say never happy – which means that we are doing our job.
We have input into system changes, SDK specs, thresholds, usage qualifiers, third-party data sources where possible etc. etc.
All changes are done in ‘test mode’ and the results are cross-checked with publishers on the MC. It’s not until that cross-section of publishers are happy that anything goes live.
Within that MC there is a LOT of transparency. Publishers ‘pool’ their data to look at ‘market’ level data while they also forensically compare the test data with their first-party data.
I have personally gone through many of the processing procedures, lines of code, third-party data injection, panel composition etc. etc. with zero hindrance. I just wish I had the time to dig even deeper.
Eveything the MC does is under NDA. Everything within the MC stays within the MC because of what we share.
So I draw the line at making it all public. If all your internal data was in the public domain at its most elemental level how would you feel about that? Do you think ANYONE would co-operate if that was the case?
And yes, marketers building their brands value R&F as much now as they ever did. This is reflected in the loud call for cross-media measurement which in the main focuses on results that not only include sales but also communications and brand results. Of course there is also a mass of sales-oriented advertising that relies solely on sales results. It’s long-term vs. short-term and both are important.
So Leon, why not give Gai a call and have a chat about the MC?
In order to ensure
Hi John,
I’ve had the privilege of seeing first-hand the dedication, great work and rigour that Gai, and yourself, have put in over many years. And we’re richer as an industry for it. But my point isn’t about that.
The concern is that the measurement methodology ie. the output of dozens of industry contributors, as you say, is poured into a black box where the core IP is owned and controlled by an external private entity (Nielsen).
There’s certainly a role for an external party to play in the management and execution of this service but it baffles me why there isn’t more transparency around the technology, maths and processes involved. If you want to retain people’s trust maybe it’s time to open the kimono? Tools like GitHub and Slack now make possible.
Hi again Leon.
I understand your frustration about how the DCR system (in particular) works. I see your point about trust.
There is definitely a “black box” element involved, and you’d rememer the black boxes that abounded all those years ago. There is a slight temporal differencein in that the MC is involved in the specs for what the black box does rather that simply buying Black Box A over Black Box B.
In those interim years audience measurement (for all media) has seen more change in the past five or so years than the past 50 or so years.
Every system is now a hybrid of multiple inputs. Each of those inputs changes regularly (and need to). In fact, it is now closer to media modelling but with the model based on the measurement of media silo (e.g. traffic measurement, device duplication measurement, longitudinal usage patterns, personal duplication, co-usage etc.,etc,) This makes it very hard to easily explain, but I will put my mind to it and see if we can’t get an education project on the go (while still honouring IP issues – can be very tricky).
Cheers. Grono.
100% coverage is not realistic, but +/- 10% should be possible. With the current coverage available with Nielsen, they are far below this.
As always John is the voice of reason
The fundamental problem is Nielsen DCR is outsourced tech (slow and notably inferior to GA) with very few engineers on the ground here in AU who deeply know the codebase – combined with an operation in Nielsen (who’s DNA evolved from lo-fi diary methods) displaying entitlement hubris that they got this digital measurement totally sorted. AKA the inmates are running the asylum.
Just another layer of useless ad-tech that promises better yield whilst clipping the ticket on someone else’s train ride.
Did I mention the fees charged *are like* it’s actually a good product that gives commercial teams confidence and support going to market?
Yeah… nah.
MamaMia are to be applauded for the courage to declare the Emperor is naked.
The product the IAB should actually commission is Google Analytics auditing. serious.deep.technical.auditing. Auditing of both a publishers technical implementation and the numbers reported.
(excuse the rant, but I’ve been laboured with implementing this waste of bandwidth at least four times, going right back to when it was Red Sheriff, the most recent just eight months ago – the code is garbage.)
I’m a tad puzzled by what Nielsen’s DNA really is Eric. Is it lo-fi diaries or Red Sheriff – one of the first-to-market? Or is that just part of your rant.
But I think you don’t understand the difference between what DCR is trying to do and what GA does.
GA does a deep dive on YOUR website/apps with all these wonderful analyses of what’s going on in real time. Does it give you any insight into your competitors website/apps performance? In fact, can you buy your competitor’s GA results? Nah, didn’t think so.
DCR is trying to measure the market. Those that are tagged and those that are untagged. Basically it acknowledges that the digital world is bigger than just what you see on your servers.
Eric did say “The product the IAB should actually commission is Google Analytics auditing. serious.deep.technical.auditing. Auditing of both a publishers technical implementation and the numbers reported.”
Perhaps there’s a misunderstanding of what this means – GA measures sites very accurately, and if Nielsen were just auditing and publishing these GA numbers, that would be measuring the market in a much more accurate way.
Of course this would upset the status quo that benefits Nielsen and their backers, so it’s unlikely to happen without a new big player creating some competition.