THE LAST WORD: Tuesday
Stephen DiMarco (Tubular Labs) moderated this discussion on the second day of the conference with the anchor commentators who shared their perspectives on what they heard and what it means.
TV
An Economic Analysis of TV Advertising Profitability
Professor Anna Tuchman of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management presented an economic analysis of the effectiveness of a major portion of the U.S. linear television advertising spend, worth $66B in 2019. The study, conducted with Bradley Shapiro and Günter Hitsch of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, investigated the elasticity of actual sales for 288 distinct CPG brands on the basis of brand-specific ad spend as captured by Nielsen store and household panels along with Nielsen Ad Intel data. They used log-log regression and flexible machine learning algorithms. Their goal is to help firms evaluate ad campaign effectiveness with the hope their measurement will help make better ad spend decisions.
MODERATED TRACK DISCUSSIONS: Attention Measures
An impressive body of work is building in attention measurement. The three winning-papers sessions preceding this panel revealed a work in progress with shared goals as well as differences in approaches. Moderator Earl Taylor of the ARF’s MSI division asked the speakers about their views on barriers to the process, and opportunities for further improving attention measures.
Prior Attentive Ad Exposures Increase Ad Attention
Tristan Webster and Kenneth Wilbur showcased their most recent collaborative work examining attention and frequency in advertising: the impact of multiple exposures on people’s attention to TV ads. They applied CTV data which TVision has collected natively in the field to provide insight into the long-examined question, “Is there an optimal frequency for TV ads?”, but more granularly: “What is happening in the media environment while viewers see ads, and how does that affect their attention?”
Attentive Reach: The Case for Human Attention in Brand Advertising
Realeyes uses software solutions for measuring human attentional and emotional response to advertising. Max Kalehoff explained the importance of attention measurement as a gauge of brand performance. He urged companies, particularly those with latent sales, to incorporate it into their business models.
MediaCell – A Passive Approach to Future-Ready Cross Media Measurement
MediaCell is an app that transforms a smartphone, tablet, or laptop into a passive portable audiometer. It also captures on-device consumption of audio and video. It is currently deployed in panels in the U.K. and Australia and will soon by deployed in South Africa. Ipsos is working with Kantar to use MediaCell in the Netherlands to produce the radio currency there. Its audio measurement capabilities are based on ACR technology. It is easy to on-board panelists; Jim noted that there were no breaks in the data in their U.K. panel due to the pandemic.
Wearables: The Future of Media Measurement
Nielsen uses the Portable People Meter (PPM) to passively measure audiences for radio and to enhance its national and local TV ratings. It is now testing a new wearable device to replace the PPM to measure audio and to replace button-pushing to measure person-level television audiences. The new wearable is intended to enable cross-platform measurement of audio and video. Two other pieces of equipment accompany the device – a beacon to allow Nielsen to distinguish between in-home and out-of-home exposure and a data hub to transmit the data back to Nielsen. Another component of the wearable system is a mobile app which will enable engagement and communication with Nielsen and can also be used to transmit data back to Nielsen.
MODERATED TRACK DISCUSSIONS: Television Disrupted
Andrea Zapata (WarnerMedia) moderated this track discussion for day two’s Television Disrupted. Andrea noted that there are a lot of disruptions, a lot of white spaces out there, and that we need alternative solutions to lean into. She asked each speaker about the background of their respective studies and research approaches.
Assuring Research Integrity in Data-Driven TV
Xandr’s Peter Doe reinforced the omnipresence of bias in TV measurement as he outlined four key areas of bias in assessing DirecTV’s (DTV) set-top box (STB) data for its national data-driven linear TV advertising. Noting DTV’s relatively low sampling size (7M STB homes) has a high level of bias when measuring for national TV viewing, Peter provided a top-line overview of Xandr’s viewership data methodology relevant to advertisers and marketers working with big datasets.
Diversity (or lack thereof) in TV
Samba’s research study on the lack of diversity in TV sought to understand the state of representation in popular TV by asking who was watching content with diverse casts, whether the show actors were representative of the U.S. population, and if people were more likely to watch TV shows where they see themselves represented.
Although the results proving TV shows’ lack of diversity were not surprising, the value of diverse audiences is growing in tandem with these populations, putting advertisers on notice to improve the status quo.