IAB Canada President, Chris Williams is currently in Seville Spain at the i_COM Global Summit representing IAB Canada on the world stage.
DAY 1 – Notes and Insights
- George Ivie, CEO of the MRC is here in Seville Spain chairing a working committee within the International Conference on Media Measurement. I asked George “so what happens next?” He said “well we will have to see how this plays out between the agencies and the publishers”. The area still to come is video viewability which required the MRC to invent a statistical analysis to isolate the effect of the creative on the viewability measure. After viewability, expect the MRC to tackle cross media GRPs, mobile and fraud measurement as its priorities.
- The working group saw how the MRC and IBOPE in Mexico collaborated on rebuilding a measurement system after a tragic sabotage of the existing measurement panel. Someone, likely an insider, for whatever reason decided to make public all the names and contact information of panellists in the measurement system. No doubt chaos ensued and rightfully the groups asked themselves how could the current arrangement be improved not only from a security perspective but also the measurement.
- Further presentations today were comScore with a very quick overview of Project Blueprint along with an approach to product development to handle different sizes of countries. The push to move from Platforms to People is evident even if some of the smaller European markets provide their own challenges.
- Another interesting case was the Dutch Joint Industry Committee which provides digital metrics. After a dramatic shift by consumers to mobile along with additional governance issues, the group decided to disband the existing arrangement and re-form with a tighter emphasis on gathering publisher ad server data along with building out a mobile panel.
- The morning finished off with a marketer panel addressing the question “what do marketers need from measurement?” consisting of:
– Anne van Merkensteijn, Associate Marketing Director at Procter & Gamble, Western Europe Brand Operations, Italy
– Mercedes Lopez Arratia, CMO, Citibank / Banamex, USA
– Gayle Fuguitt, CEO, Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), USA on behalf of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), USA
– Khurram Hamid, Global Director Digital Media & Measurement, GlaxoSmithKline, UK - The most common answer being the need for set of common metrics across all media for brand and response campaigns. Clearly the challenge to the room in that request is there isn’t a standard anywhere to use. While some point to a universal GRP, Jane Clark, Managing Director at Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) point out that GRPs aren’t a metric for specific ad exposure, at least not yet.
- The split between local and international solutions, and the focus on measuring ads instead of the publishers creates much of the chaos we see in the industry. Gayle Fuguitt, CEO/President at Advertising Research Foundation underlined the need for a consumer driven approach where path to purchase evidence is strong.
Looking forward to the rest of the week where we will find out the winners of the big data venture challenge, cheer for the Canadian enter James Prudhomme of Datacratic.