The IAB's challenge to Nielsen and comScore
Introduction
The Super CMO
Social media versus complexity
Think "web first"
The IAB's challenge to Nielsen and comScore
Making online safe for digital immigrants
Berens: For all of the measurements that we have with interactive advertising, this is an ever-changing ground. Just look at the emergence of YouTube and of video, and two-minute videos and now long format videos on ABC.com, NBC.com, Veoh, Joost… all of these companies.
The basic metric of impressions is somewhat imperiled because we have so many different kinds of engagement, and the impression-based models are not necessarily reflective of that, because if someone is sitting on one page, watching something for five minutes, and that is one impression, that is getting measured the same way as somebody clicking on something and staying there for a moment. So, I am interested in your take both on how the behavior -- and therefore the ability to measure behavior online -- is changing, and what the IAB is going to be doing about that. Let's take that as our way into the Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore issue.
Rothenberg: The problem is, it is too big a question. You can only give a broad, general answer to something like that. We are going through an ongoing revolution. It is a revolution of continual new innovation in the way ideas, concepts, images, news, sounds and stories are communicated. Every new innovation calls up new opportunities for thinking about how persuasion works, and thus calls up a need for new kinds of measurements, and it also challenges existing measurements. I think that is just kind of a pure, fairly simple statement of fact.
What can anybody do about it? You try and create, across industry, understanding and processes at the highest level, some agreement based on science and field research about the metrics that matter. How are we going to get them? And, how are we going to make sure they are as accurate as we can make them? That is really, that is really the challenge now.
We all have to work together to avoid a complete free-for-all, a complete breakdown in the system, whereby each individual company -- whichever side it is on, buy-side/demand-side, buy-side/sell-side -- comes up with its own idea and tries to use market force, or market power, to ram its idea down everybody else’s throats.
The way it ought to work (and, the way it has historically worked in other media), is to bring to bear laboratory science, field research, and practicality from all of the various sides of the issue, and then to try to reach rational agreement on what matters.
Berens: And where, is this happening at the IAB inside the say, Todd Teresi’s Measurement Council?
Rothenberg: We have a Measurement Council, we have an Ad Operations Council, and we have a Research Council that are all involved in this. What we are doing -- and what we need to do -- is to make sure that those groups are fully integrated. So if they are touching different pieces of the elephant, then they are doing it not with blinders on but with great, great foresight.
So, that we have the Research Council picking up one thing that is important, working with the Measurement Council that is picking up on another thing that is important, and then working with the Ad Ops Council to make sure that it all makes practical sense in the supply chain. They have all come together, and are coming together in this current work with comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings.
Berens: We had a version of this panel measurement controversy back in October when AdWeek challenged the panels. What's the difference?
Rothenberg: AdWeek is not a trade association. AdWeek is not a representative body. And, I think what journalists do is very important, obviously, and very, very useful. But, it can be easy to ignore because there is no representative basis for it. So, you kind of cannot compare it. That is like saying, you know, “What is the difference between what the New York Post writes and what the Bush administration does?” They are in different businesses.
The better comparison is this: What is the difference between what the IAB did over the past month compared to what the IAB did in past years? In that sense, it is not all that different.
I am somewhat surprised at all of the attention that got paid to this. IAB has been pushing the major measurement companies to get audited and accredited by the Media Rating Council for years, and years, and years. So, we did not say, and have not said anything differently than what we have said almost since the origins of IAB. I do not think it is what we did that has changed. I think it is the market context that has changed.
This is now serious. This is not a game anymore. This is not a sectarian cult among, you know, digital natives dealing with each other. This is not something that one company or another company can ignore because the big money just is not taking it seriously.
We are talking about massive shifts of budget by the world’s largest marketers, and they are going to demand exactly the same standards, exactly the same underlying principles, in terms of expectations for audience measurement as they demanded for television, for radio, for newspapers, and for magazines.
And there is an additional, an additional set of pressures on top of it, because for most of the history -- certainly of broadcast audience ratings -- there was an acceptance of the fact that these were estimates, that these were, you know, raw, and in some cases flawed, that you are basically doing the best you can with the resources that you have in an environment that is technologically constrained.
With interactive, the expectations here are for true accountability. So, it is a shock to the system to marketers who come from outside the digital native realm to discover, “Well, wait a minute. We are using the same methodologies? We have got the same problems? We have got the same, you know, junk we have been dealing with in the broadcast ratings for several generations? That does not make any sense.”
So, that is what has changed. That context has changed.
When you have the major marketers and the major agencies saying things like, “We believe the future of marketing is to think web first.” Then, you have just got to get up to speed. The line I keep using is, “This is the major leagues now. You cannot continue to play by playground rules.”
Berens: There are a lot of old timers in the industry, who have had as a trope, or a catch phrase, that “interactive is waiting to get a seat at the big kids’ table.” And, it sounds to me like you are very firmly saying that not only is there a seat at the big kids’ table, but that people are turning to the new grown-up at the table for some kind of leadership.
Rothenberg: They are. And, I think it is incumbent on everyone to step up to the plate and offer that leadership. There is a lot of good news here, too. You should not think for a minute that the major audience ratings companies do not have a fair share of very brilliant people in them. They have attracted some terrific scientists, some terrific technologists, some terrific sociologists, and they do know what they are doing.
But, I think they, and many of us, have had the luxury for a couple of years of operating outside the scrutiny of the senior marketers at the major marketing companies. Now the scrutiny is turning up. It is happening because the commitments of budget and the assumption of results is so strong and so high. That means that we have to collaborate in a very different way, and make sure that the bedrock principles of how an extended enterprise operates be adhered to.
Berens: And is the IAB working with, say, the Media Rating Council (MRC) and the OPA? Who are your partners for all of this?
Rothenberg: Yes, absolutely. The core group includes the AAAA, the AMA, the MRC, the OPA and the ARF: all will be represented at the summit meeting that we are having with the audience measurement companies on May 16th.
And, there is also a lot of real interest and support form many of the other media trade associations; they are all facing the same thing, because all of their members -- it does not matter what the medium is -- are developing interactive operations. All of them are vitally concerned about integrating those major operations into their existing businesses. All of them are facing the same challenges with audience measurement and impressions measurement.
So, I do not expect that there is much disagreement at all out there among the major trade associations and the media and marketing world about the importance of MRC auditing and accreditation. It really is kind of a first obligation for measurement companies -- especially those that aspire to seriousness and to greatness -- to have their technologies, processes and systems open to independent scrutiny so the market can be assured that they actually are delivering what they say they are delivering.
Berens: I do not think either comScore or Nielsen is resistant to this. I think it has just been a matter of getting there.
Rothenberg: I cannot speak to the past. I do know from George Ivie at the MRC, for example, that a typical MRC pre-audit (that is, as you might guess, the first phase of an audit) takes about two months, and in the case of some these companies, pre-audits have taken up to two years. I believe both of them have actually been done, but, you will need to check on that, because I cannot swear to it.
Berens: Well, according to Magid Abraham of comScore, the audit itself can take quite a bit of time. Although I think the pre-audit has been done for both Nielsen and comScore. I would have to check on that.
Rothenberg: George Ivie will tell you that in the case of both companies, the length of time that this has been going on is somewhere between “extremely unusual” and “unique.” It diverges vastly from the norm. The MRC and IAB’s request to Nielsen for interactive audits date back at least to 1999. And to comScore, they date back at least to 2004.
It has been this cycle of frustration that boils into anger, and “yeah, yeah, we will do something.” And, then it goes silent; and then frustration, and then anger, and it boils over. It is like a bad marriage.
This time we just said, “We are out there serving the marketing industry. They are going to demand it, even if they are not demanding it now. So, this is serious, and we are not going to let up. It is for your own good as well, because if you do not play by the established principles, ultimately you will not be taken seriously by the largest marketers in the United States and in the world.”
We are very, very serious about sticking with it, absolutely not dropping it, continuing to use the bully pulpit, and at the same time we are really committed to working across the industry openly and collaboratively to create the processes and the relationships that can help evolve the future of media in market and accountability processes.