Matt Prohaska will be presenting at Programmatic IO taking place in New York City on Sept. 26-27.
As someone who lived and worked in New York City during the ’90s, I feel obligated to make at least one “Seinfeld” reference a week. And for those of you who may not remember this reference from the column’s title, it’s all about George Costanza, his paranoia and what would happen if his girlfriend met his real friends.
When it comes to how we attribute and measure performance in ad spend, there are two worlds that are slowly colliding: digital and television buying and selling.
These are two worlds that, unfortunately, have been far too detached for more than 10 years. This is primarily due to agencies and publishers creating separate teams, first to handle digital media, then digital video, then DOOH, then podcasting, and so on.
Though I began my career in television at Turner, then BBDO, I was fortunate to co-found the digital media practice at BBDO in 1994. Since then, these two worlds have been playing by completely different sets of rules due to the nature of ad delivery and tracking.
Same game, different rules
Digital buyers began using a “Last-Click/Last-Touch” (LCLT) method of tracking who gets credit for ads that work. Too many still do. On the other side, almost all TV buyers still use demos and relatively small panels to count ads that have been delivered to create gross rating points – the almighty GRPs!
Surely, there are challenges with both methodologies, and they’re starting to be resolved. But not fast enough. LCLT literally means that whichever publisher serves or shows that final ad before the click is the one who gets all the credit. We know this doesn’t happen that often. And we know it makes no sense.
Think about the last time you bought something online. Think about any engagement you’ve had with any product. Was it a single ad you saw or one place you searched that drove you to buy? Surely not.
By keeping score primarily by LCLT, we have collectively created the warped incentives that continue to drive most digital buyers. They’re incentivized to buy boatloads of cheap inventory in open auction programmatic marketplaces, inventory that’s based on cookie retargeting, aiming to trick ad servers and steal credit from the more genuine transactions that happened via direct buys (through IO or private marketplaces).
And if you think that’s bad, guess who ends up getting most of the credit anyway? Hints: They have 92% of the world’s search market (Google), control a very large share of social media (Meta and TikTok), are a dominant ecommerce platform (Amazon) or operate a large app ecosystem where even if you tap the editorial link for an app from the search, it auto-downloads from the ad link creating a false click (Apple).
And we call this accurate?
The TV world isn’t much better. If I’m trying to sell something to a 61-year-old who wants to buy it, why am I forced to chase Adults 25-54? Yes, Nielsen moving into what they call “big data” will eventually help them catch up with the upstart measurement firms, but we’re losing time. And far too many worthy publishers are losing money.
To be sure, there are efforts underway, such as Nielsen allowing Amazon to not use its panel-based currency. But that’s understandably tough to take if you’re a fellow streaming/broadcast publisher, especially if you’re also selling NFL programming. And it’s an even harder pill to swallow when the established third-party measurement service proposes to allow for one partner to contribute while no one else can.
Old habits are hard to break
The reality is that changes like this are never easy. Most Tuesday status meetings between CMOs and CEO/CFOs, or media directors and clients, will not begin with something like, “Hey, you know that dashboard that I’ve been showing you for years that has our RoAS improving every quarter by putting more money into just five places? Yeah, well, probably half of that is BS.”
But for years, buyers have received Easy Buttons that allow a handful of publishers to grade their own homework. Real change is necessary, especially among top 500 advertisers and their agencies. We should all demand better.
Let’s assume all television soon will be delivered via Internet Protocol (IP), and IP targeting will be allowed in this country and globally as PII (still a big assumption today). Then, these two worlds will collide more quickly than many would like, and we’ll need to incorporate the best habits into both without carrying over bad habits from a past era.
You might ask, “Why would we ever demand that publishers allow third-party measurement with metrics beyond demos from a small panel?” It’s not like any trust issues with companies grading their own homework or providing black-box targeting have Ever. Happened. Before. Right?
Changing hearts and minds takes time. It’s great to see progress such as Open AP’s national measurement JIC, but we must continue the momentum. Because if we don’t, then too many publishers will continue to give buyers lots more “yada yada yada.”
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
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