Media Mayhem: Karen Halligan – ‘Privacy is paramount’
These are interesting times, and the challenges faced by Australian marketing and media are frequently diabolical. There is always opportunity in a crisis, but rarely a single solution that is easy to see. Many are worried, searching for answers, and seeking guidance from our best thinkers. At Mumbrella, we want to interview industry leaders to understand their insights and learn how they handle the challenges and structure for the future. We hope this can help inspire our industry to trade through the storms and deliver the best work on the global stage.
In this week’s Media Mayhem, we talk to the CEO of OzTAM, Karen Halligan.
How is the operating environment impacting your team, your clients, and or your partners?
Regulatory changes, digital transformation, audience behaviour shifts, and economic conditions are all impacting the Australian media industry and measurement is not immune to these impacts. Downward pressure is being placed on marketing budgets and as a result, the broad ecosystem that OzTAM collaborates with is feeling this in one way or another.
On the positive side there’s a growing emphasis on data-driven decision making, leading to partnerships focused on analytics and insights with all stakeholders needing to be agile, innovative, and responsive. This feeds right into the services we provide now and is pushing us to innovate quickly to meet future needs.
There’s a constant need to innovate content and delivery methods to attract and engage audiences effectively, and OzTAM has been investing into the right areas and is well positioned for 2025 when I expect we will see a return to a growth environment.
What changes are you seeing in consumer behaviours and preferences? How are you meeting them?
Commercial BVOD (broadcaster video on demand) platforms now reach around 11 million people monthly and SVOD (subscription video on demand) is also growing. Coupled with the enduring strength of traditional broadcast TV, media consumption has become omnipresent, necessitating that we measure audiences where they engage. OzTAM recognises the opportunity to provide robust, accountable data throughout the media consumption journey, tailoring our datasets to meet the evolving needs of agencies and the changing viewing habits of consumers.
With the transition to VOZ as trading currency on December 29 2024, we are bringing together broadcast TV and BVOD into a single, national, comprehensive trading currency. This significant milestone answers the industry’s call for a holistic, independent data measurement service.
Layered on this is VOZ Streaming, which will offer scalable reach, de-duplicated programmatic trading of BVOD audiences, and precise targeting of BVOD viewers across different broadcasters – capabilities that Australian media agencies have been actively seeking.
Our ongoing rollout of streaming TV meters enhances our measurement capabilities and provides the opportunity for new data insights, which we are eager to showcase to the market in 2025. Furthermore, OzTAM is exploring additional big data opportunities to strengthen the connection between content, audiences and advertisers. We continue to make significant investments in delivering best practice cross screen measurement.
When you lift your eyes from the screen to the media and marketing horizon, how are you planning?
One of the reasons I have spent my career in the media and marketing space is because it never sits still, there is always something new around the corner that will require new ways of working and adaption in thinking. I remember being interviewed by a career counsellor who suggested advertising to me in year nine – she said at the time: “You will never get bored” and she could not have been more correct. As a result I am constantly seeking new information.
When looking at the media and marketing horizon, a key priority for me is to establish a collaborative, unified measurement approach – one measurement system across total video, including SVOD, that all agencies and broadcasters utilise. We are fully embracing digital transformation and new technologies to enable the industry to leverage deeper insights and analytics into consumer behaviours and preferences.
Central to our strategy is enhanced industry collaboration; you cannot take a customer-based approach without spending time with the people you service. This year, our engagement with the MFA, the AANA, Nielsen, broadcasters, and the agency holdcos has been unparalleled, yielding significant progress.
What proposals for legislative change would you prioritise?
For any data company, privacy is paramount especially with VOZ Streaming launching at the end of this year. We are leaning into the changes in this area and tailoring our approach, and as legislation is being reviewed, we need to be sure that we are respecting the data that we hold, the value that it presents but also ensuring that we enhance our customer’s experience in a privacy compliant manner.
What opportunities do you see, and how are you positioning your organisation?
Our commitment to industry consultation, collaboration and continuous innovation ensures that we will continue to deliver Australia’s best, independently audited, audience measurement solution for the industry.
We have a strong foundation, with exceptional people, trusted data integrity systems and a world-class all-screen audience measurement service. Our unique measurement assets include over 20,000 viewers in panel homes, more than 65,000 Establishment Survey respondents annually, 4,000 streaming TV meters in panel homes and viewing from more than 16 million connected devices monthly for BVOD measurement.
The opportunities to integrate new technology and big data on top of this established system are both vast and exciting, and ensures that OzTAM will continue to deliver best practice data measurement. We are currently discussing our roadmap for 2025 and 2026 with agencies and the feedback has been very encouraging.
As I mentioned earlier, industry collaboration is crucial. We aim to be more than just a data provider; we want to actively engage with all sectors of the industry. This collaboration enables us to ensure that our processes and data are fit for purpose, seamlessly integrating into existing systems and workflows to support informed decision-making.
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Neil Griffiths is the Managing Editor of Mumbrella. He joined the company in October 2023.
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