For online advertisers, managing campaigns these days can feel like flying blind in a black box.
No wonder ad buyers are so willing to hand the keys off to AI copilots and bots.
And little wonder, too, that the IAB unveiled its Project Eidos on Monday, a new program uniting its numerous measurement initiatives under one banner. “Eidos” comes from the Greek, which means “to see.”
The push for clearer measurement is part of a broader shift in the online ad industry to embrace “privacy by design” and modern attribution tools, such as incrementality testing and data-driven media mix modeling (MMM), said Angelina Eng, VP of the IAB Measurement Center.
But these are only “workarounds and Band-Aids,” Eng told AdExchanger.
For years, she said, the industry has relied on “digital duct tape” to fix its campaign measurement problems. The solution, in her view, is to bring identity data measurement and standardization initiatives under one umbrella.
Thus, Project Eidos.
So, what’s new?
There’s not much that’s new with Project Eidos, actually, and that’s the point.
The idea is to centralize – “harmonize” was Eng’s term – the various measurement programs already underway across the IAB. The retail media standardization initiative, for example? That’s part of Eidos now.
Whether planning a campaign or measuring its impact, the online ad industry still struggles to establish consistent definitions for many basic terms. It may sound simple to fix, but agreeing on those definitions has proven to be an intractably difficult problem.
Take the booming video and CTV media channels. “Does television count as video?” Eng said.
Or should it go by “advanced video” or “CTV”? And shouldn’t CTV be definitionally distinct from linear television ads? Oh, and are video tiles on a smart TV homepage CTV? Is any internet-connected screen on a wall a TV?
And we haven’t even gotten to questions like whether social content or livestreamed gaming ads on a TV should count as video units. You could argue that’s CTV advertising or even, perhaps, creator marketing.
Similar ambiguities arise when you bring in audio.
What, for instance, is podcast advertising? Once again, a seemingly obvious question that creates a thorny tangle.
As platforms like Netflix, Spotify, YouTube and others develop a new class of talk shows – you know, “video podcasts” – are the ads within them video ads or podcast ads? As of now, there’s no easy classification.
What’s next
Clarifying what counts as a particular media channel or ad format is a critical first step, Eng said.
Later this year, for example, Project Eidos will begin standardizing terms and data inputs that feed into MMM products.
In the meantime, though, the lack of such standards already carries a steep price, Eng said. The IAB estimates that, at minimum, the industry loses at least $9 billion annually due to inconsistent definitions, API feeds and data inputs – much of it spent on manual work by humans to normalize and sync the data themselves.
“Everyone has their own naming conventions and their own buckets of how they want to see where the media budget is spent,” Eng said.
That’s why Project Eidos is such an important “tentpole” initiative” for the IAB, she said. Effective measurement is mission critical for the success of online advertising – and it depends on the entire industry agreeing on shared standards.
“This is not a one-sided [program] driven by ad tech,” Eng said. “It is driven by the buy side, sell side and intermediaries.”
