Ad execs are deeply skeptical that TV measurement will ever catch up to digital — putting comScore and Nielsen on notice and billions on the line

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• The beleaguered media research firm ComScore is trying
  to mount a challenge against incumbent Nielsen with a string of
  major hires and product announcements.
• The stakes are huge, as advertisers spend $70
  billion on TV ads annually in the US, yet TV viewership is
  shifting radically, meaning that TV measurement is a massive
  challenge.
• Ad sellers and buyers welcome the competition, but
  plenty are skeptical. Some worry that these metrics firms need
  to catch up as TV advertising becomes increasingly tech
  and data driven.

Tracking TV viewing is really complicated in an era of multiple
screens and on demand streams. And the stakes are high, given
there’s a
$70 billion ad market on the line.

Nielsen, the decades-old incumbent in the TV research game,
claims it is equipped for an OTT world. Rival comScore intends to
leapfrog Nielsen in
its ability to gauge who watches which show when and where.

The rest of the industry isn’t totally convinced.

Even as several TV executives champion competition between
comScore and Nielsen, hoping that both firms raise their games,
there remains serious doubts about either researchers’ ability to
serve the industry’s needs going forward.

As more people watch TV shows on digital screens, on their own
schedules and with varying ad loads, tracking just how many
people see those shows only gets harder.

As comScore vows improvement, and Nielsen defends its turf, some
experts are questioning whether these companies are fighting
yesterday’s wars, trying to count the totality of TV audiences
when advertisers are increasingly using data to run ads against
specific audiences. That’s the kind of thing they do every day on
Facebook and Google, and they increasingly want to do on TV.

“The industry has this weird hangover,” said Jonathan
Steuer, chief research officer for the ad buying agency Omnicom
Media Group. “The transition to streaming happened faster
than people expected, so we still don’t have good cross-platform
measurement.

“But ratings alone are answers to the wrong test, since streaming
ads and content don’t need to be tied together as they are in
linear TV.”

Tal Chalozin, CTO and cofounder at the video ad tech firm
Innovid, says
that the new wave of direct-to-consumer brands, accustomed to
selling to consumers on Facebook and Instagram using all sorts of
powerful data sets, will be left wanting by either comScore of
Nielsen, and their panel-based metric approaches.

“Neither are giving the market what they want,” he said. “DTC
brands are not going to be happy.”

Right now, TV companies still love ratings. And they think
they’re being shortchanged.

For several years now, as live linear TV ratings have tanked,
many in the TV industry have grumbled loudly. People are still
watching our shows, just differently, they say. And Nielsen is
doing a lousy job of adding up how many people watch X show live,
via a DVR, on demand, on Hulu, on a network’s TV app, on their
phones, etc.

It’s created an overall sense of frustration.

“I believe we are undervalued still,” said Radha Subramanyam,
EVP, chief research and analytics at CBS.

Subramanyam highlighted two key metrics that are crucial to
tracking TV, but lacking in the current market:

• De-duplication: Even though OTT viewing
  provides lots of data, it doesn’t tell TV networks who those
  people are, or whether they are the same people watching on
  other screens. So you can end up counting the same people more
  than once.
• Co-viewing: OTT doesn’t tell you how many
  people are watching at a given time. So you can end up counting
  a family of four watching TV together as a single
  stream/viewer.

“Those are the missing pieces,”
said Subramanyam. Nielsen doesn’t have an answer, she
added.  

“I don’t believe there is a live product today that can get at
those numbers. Not to my knowledge.”

CBS/”Big Bang Theory”

This is where comScore, which has been left battered over the
past several years amidst accounting scandals and leadership
turmoil, sees a big opening.

The firm has been telling advertisers behind the scenes it has
solutions for de-duplication and co-viewing. Nielsen is seen by
some as behind on these crucial metrics.

“An industry challenge we are all facing now, is that currently
there is no accurate measurement platform to account for
de-duplicated reach and co-viewing, which is why we are excited
to see what comScore has to offer with this new beta study,”
said Julie DeTraglia, head of research at Hulu,
referring to
comScore’s just announced new product rollout.

Nielsen says it has offered viable products for both metrics for
years.

“We’ve gained a lot of ground in capturing viewership in the OTT
and connected TV in the past couple of years, working with
clients in this space including Hulu, Roku and others to provide
currency measurement across their platforms,” said Kelly
Abcarian, SVP of Product Leadership at Nielsen in a statement
“It’s not a surprise to see that that’s where others are headed
now as well.”

“The key to audience measurement of OTT viewing is being able to
actually measure people – and simply put, Nielsen is the only
provider in the market that does this.”

It’s all very confusing.

comScore is back from the dead. And it sees a huge opening

A few months ago,
Business Insider went deep on the state of TV measurement.
comScore didn’t get good reviews.

The company’s recently installed CEO Bryan Wiener doesn’t dispute
that assessment. He knows comScore needed to get its act
together.

A blunt digital ad veteran, Wiener recently unveiled a new
product promising a way to count how many people see an
advertisers’ ad campaign across different platforms,
reported the Wall Street Journal.

Wiener says that comScore has an aggressive product roadmap for
the next few months, with plans to offer products for ad buyers
and ad sellers that pull together data from cable set top boxes,
digital panels, mobile devices, and other sources. 

“Our number one priority across the entire business is to
continue to establish comScore as currency and the new standard
for cross-platform measurement, with a focus on premium
video,” Wiener wrote in a memo.

“We have a lot to prove, and we intend to prove it,” Wiener told
Business Insider. He also said that that push toward more
targeted TV advertising plays to comScore’s strengths, since it
has access to a deep well of cable set top data.

To help his cause, Wiener has just tapped the highly respected

Sarah Hofstetter as comScore’s new
president. Wiener and Hofstetter each had
stints as CEO and chairman of the ad agency 360i at different
periods.

Hofstetter starts at comScore next month. She knows she’s
facing a major challenge, but also sees a huge opening.

“As a buyer for many years, I know what a problem
it is,” she said. “People keep talking about it, how the industry
needs better measurement. But how many people are tying to make a
difference?”

Sarah Hofstetter
Sarah
Hofstetter

Hofstetter sees an advantage in that she and Wiener
come to comScore with fresh eyes, and no legacy loyalties to any
particular products. 

That should be music to the ears for media buyers, some of who
believe that TV measurement is stuck in the the live
linear-viewing era.

“Ratings are really just a brochure for sellers,”
said Steuer. “What people who buy media really
care about is measuring impressions against individuals and
households.”

For that to work, Steuer says you need
data from devices, servers and from panels so advertisers can
calibrate matching people to devices. “And we still don’t have
that.”

Hofstetter said she
gets the perspective that TV ratings are less important in an on
demand world, and the desire for new data sets. 

“My issue as a buyer was always
getting greater line of sight in the totality of my media plan,”
she said. “That’s a con
tinual challenge, n
ot yesterday’s war.”

One thing that’s already
changing, according to clients, is comScore’s focus on their
needs. comScore’s priorities were previously divided
between sales and product, they said. Wiener’s tried to change
that.

“He’s got a client mindset,” said Kavita Vazirani, EVP,
Strategic Insights and Analytics, NBCUniversal.

“He’s said, ‘Let’s do what we’re good at, and
what our clients want. Then the product will
follow.’ And we’re always happy to test new metrics
tools. We need to lead and innovate on measurement,
so we are always willing to participate in these sorts of tests.”

It seems revealing that both Hulu and NBCU executives refer to
comScore’s new product as a test.

The jury is still out on the comeback.