anticipated , consumers are gravitating to digital platforms that offer a great user experience and increasingly robust premium on demand content libraries – delivered in high-definition on the main screen in the home .
It ’ s old news that some ( not all ) of this behaviour is at the expense of legacy distribution platforms and content production models . What is new is the ability to harness the mainstream scale of these platforms and consumer behaviours to shed a spotlight on the effectiveness of brands ’ video strategies and tactics across all screens and platforms .
The stage has been set : stats abound of increased global Smart / Connected TV penetration , Netflix / SVOD subscriber growth , time spent viewing streaming / OTT premium content , proliferation of connected devices , and so on . New actors , such as Automated Content Recognition embedded in devices , TVs , smartphone apps and voice assistants / IoT devices are on the scene , and the same OTT paradigm-shift roiling the “ old Hollywood ’ model are poised to similarly impact measurement frameworks , as well .
As evidenced by the moves of currency TV ratings players Nielsen and comScore to incorporate large-scale “ census ” settop-box datasets into their panel-based national and local TV audience ratings estimates , scale is the new imperative for measuring consumer behaviour and ad delivery / effectiveness in the modern consumer media ecosystem . “ Innovative ” and controversial as these early “ hybrid ” methods may be , ultimately , multichannel video programming distributor ( MVPD ) - derived set-top-box data is merely a halfstep towards the future of cross-platform media and advertising measurement .
To achieve truly scalable cross-platform video viewing and ad effectiveness measurement , the measurement systems themselves have to break the confines of siloed set-top and panel-based paradigms and embrace OTT platforms and concepts .
Taking measurement over-the-top is arguably the only viable path toward the grand finale – an ideal world of perfect information gathered across all screens and touch-points , delivered in real-time . While that ’ s likely to remain just the treatment of an as-yet unwritten script for the future of media research , 2018 will
How brands communicate with people will continue to evolve rapidly away from just standard paid media . Brands will embrace new storytelling opportunities , look to entertain in innovative ways , and even start experimenting with voice-activated marketing , but this will also raise new measurement challenges .
prove a break-out year in the integration of various forms of passive OTT media and advertising data into the measurement frameworks of tomorrow . Scale and technology will enable and hasten it – the inexorable tide of consumer behaviour will demand it .
Tips for Marketers : Marketers should explore the potential for their brands to leverage OTT platforms not only to meet their customers where they ’ re increasingly spending time with premium video content , but also to explore what a digitally-powered “ Over-The-Top ” paradigm means for new forms of TV and cross-platform media measurement .
Cross media is the $ 100 million-dollar dilemma
In 2017 , most advertisers started to reconsider their digital investment and scrutinise its impact . In 2018 they will go one step further and start to question the role digital plays within the entire media ecosystem ; media agencies , publishers and research partners will have to be ready to give an answer .
2017 has been the year of re-thinking digital , with most of the big advertisers reconsidering their approach to investing online . After news that P & G cut its digital spend by over $ 100 million dollars and saw no immediate impact on sales , marketers are now keenly focused on ensuring that they understand the impact of their investment , particularly given that digital now accounts for more than 30 % of global share of investment .
Digital is not only an area of growing investment , it is also transforming the entire media landscape . In countries with mature advertising ecosystems like the US and UK , traditional offline media such as TV and OOH are “ digitalising ”, meaning that , among other things , advertisers are starting to buy these media programmatically . Digital is no longer a channel , it is the layer that connects all marketing activities and should therefore not be treated as a silo .
In 2018 marketers will focus on measuring online and offline advertising as a whole to understand how digital is contributing to the entire media ecosystem ; however , agencies and advertisers will increasingly face multiple challenges when trying to achieve this holistic measurement .
Cookies , the universal way of tracking consumers ’ online behaviours , will disappear over the next few years . Media investment in mobile - currently 50 % of digital spend - will increase exponentially . More mobile investment will lead to more “ walled gardens ” of data and different systems that agencies and advertisers will have to navigate . Technology such as mobile ID matching , geo-location and passive metering will facilitate new ways to measure behaviour , but not without collaboration across publishers , media agencies and research agencies .
As an industry , we need to work together more cohesively if we are going to facilitate ways to effectively measure advertising ROI . Our latest Getting Media Right report shows that 77 % of marketers would increase their investment if they could better measure cross-channel ROI . It ’ s up to industry players to answer the $ 100 million dilemma : how could that money be invested better – and not cut – so that it achieves the desired impact ?
Tips for Marketers : Marketers should focus on cross-media measurement to understand their ROI . A collaborative effort between brand , agency , publisher and research partners is required to develop and improve solutions to understand cross-channel effects .
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