Why we need Cross Platform Integrated Solutions
The way we view content has changed too fast for it to be measured accurately or easily.
In Italy in recent years 48% of total advertising spend has been TV advertising. Internet advertising in Italy has accounted for 32% of total spend, whereas in the UK it’s been around 56%. The online spend occurs across multiple online media channels, but how you measure content across multiple disparate media channels is another matter.
We need more integrated cross-platform tools, ones that allow simultaneous content measurement across disparate platforms and linear TV. This is a pre-requisite as you need your data to be in one place for ease of analysis and uniform measurement.
These tools do exist but only in about 15 markets, the coverage is not global. The most sophisticated solutions and hardware are only in about 7 markets.
The above scenario makes it more complex to plan and buy audiences. It also means advertisers may be influenced to migrate advertising spend to platforms with verified audiences. Where there are no credible measurement solutions for online channels, gaps appear in audience measurement reporting. CTV (connected TV) adds more complexity as TV manufacturers (like LG) measure what people are watching directly from the TV sets sold to them.
Some years ago LG Acquired a controlling stake in TV Data and Measurement Firm Alphonso. Allowing them “to create a robust owned and operated first-screen, cross-device advertising platform with integrated analytics platform for LG TVs and the smart TV marketplace as a whole”.
This paints a picture of an even more refracted and disparate industry, with individual organisations “empire building” and owning their own data and audience viewing figures platforms. Organisations like jics who measure mainly linear TV viewing data, face more disparate sources of non-linear audience viewing data. The JIC is the broadcaster-backed joint industry committee (JIC). They have built “a set of unified criteria for cross-platform measurement certification of currencies and to aggregate data needed for streaming to be used for both planning and posting across multiple programmers”.
The problem is:
“Linear TV ad buys are bought and measured based on the average number of either commercial minutes or viewers throughout a given show or movie over several days. Both metrics are based on age and gender demographics.
Streaming TV, on the other hand, measures individual impressions at the ad server level, similar to digital media. In turn, agencies buy streaming ad spots based on actual impressions” (Alyssa Boyle 2024).
So it may have been better to use ad buying technology already in use by the industry. Also, no one is obliged to work with jic certified vendors.