The Rocky Road to Single Source
The ability to funnel all media behavior into a single data source is considered the Holy Grail among media buyers and planners. The increased efficiencies gained from measuring every message your customers are exposed to — across all media — and what they did as a result of that exposure holds great promise for media buyers and planners.
There was much talk about the longstanding idea of single source at the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)’s Audience [Me]asurement 2.0 conference in New York, along with high hopes around the efforts under way to drive brands toward this measurement nirvana. The benefits of single source are clear: the ability to look at media exposure at a consumer level and understand synergies among media types.
Media planners for the most part are eagerly awaiting single-source initiatives such as Project Apollo, which combines consumers’ purchase patterns with their media exposure. Currently being tested in 5,000 U.S. households, Apollo integrates a portfolio of research with data from Arbitron’s Portable People Meter (which itself is being pilot-tested in two markets — Philadelphia and Houston) and ACNielsen’s Homescan scanner, which allows panelists to continually record their packaged-goods purchases. (For our initial take on Apollo’s pilot tests, click here.)
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How Arbitron’s Portable People Meter Works The PPM audience measurement system can track consumer exposure to broadcast signals across various media, including TV, radio, and the Internet. The meter hardware is a mobile-phone-sized device that consumers wear; it works by detecting inaudible ID codes that can be embedded in the audio portion of any transmission. Encoder hardware is installed at the programming or distribution source to insert the ID code into audio streams. A base station extracts data from the PPM devices and routes it to a household hub, which passes the data to a central computer system via a telephone line. For more info, click here. |
Apollo’s ability to help marketers examine the cause and effect of media and how that relates to sales by itself is not a significant breakthrough. Apollo raises the bar, however, by allowing marketers to slice and dice data at the consumer level, enabling segment analysis and other advanced techniques.
Other single-source efforts are also moving forward. Nielsen//NetRatings and Mediamark Research Inc. recently announced a partnership to integrate and track consumers’ usage of print media and their related online properties. The two companies are fusing respondent-level information from their separate media tracking services to create a single database called Net//MRI.
Although there’s plenty of excitement — and momentum — around these initiatives, marketers should not view any of them as the Grail. Several barriers remain on the road to single-source nirvana, including the following:
- An inability to link data in a standardized way. The consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry — the primary focus of the Apollo pilot — is one of the few verticals that has the systems to link to behavioral data in a standardized fashion. This will limit the application of any cross-industry initiative to create a single source, unless other verticals decide to mirror CPG’s approach. Arbitron is pushing the thinking about extending standardized data systems to other industries.
- Media fragmentation. The ongoing fragmentation of media — “traditional” Internet, DVR systems, social media, mobile, and beyond — makes it increasingly difficult for marketers to get their arms around an ever-growing pile of data, even without the added challenge of managing it all from a single source. The technology-driven landscape changes so quickly that measurement firms will be hard-pressed to develop a system that is nimble enough to accommodate all forms of emerging media.
- A myopic view of the currency. Media fragmentation also has created a growing disparity between how media are bought, how they’re executed, and how they’re measured. Each medium has its own form of currency (e.g., GRP for TV), and different groups are used to looking at pieces of the marketing mix in their own way. A media buyer might say the currency has to be in GRPs. A brand manager might view spending as the key metric. A single source will require a common measurement link among incompatible currencies.
- Limitations of sampling methodologies. Current technologies that would enable single-source media measurement require panelists. The more you try to slice and dice such an audience across different media, the smaller the sample sizes get, and the more difficult it becomes to pull out meaningful insights — even if all that data resides in a single database.
Keep the Process Moving
Apollo, Net//MRI, and other initiatives that would allow marketers to track communications across media, and the resulting behavioral shifts of consumers exposed to that messaging, represent a critical step forward in the measurement space. Marketers and media buyers should not give up the chase for single source to optimize their media allocations, but they must also realize that the journey will be a long one.
Apollo, Net//MRI, and other initiatives that would allow marketers to track communications across media, and the resulting behavioral shifts of consumers exposed to that messaging, represent a critical step forward in the measurement space. Marketers and media buyers should not give up the chase for single source to optimize their media allocations, but they must also realize that the journey will be a long one.
As we move forward, we must continue to explore ways to layer non-media marketing activities onto their measurement systems. Data integration tools that can accommodate multiple data streams, not just those from traditional media, are one option worth considering. Integrating data from several sources will give marketers a better view into media’s impact on business objectives in the broader context of other marketing activities and uncontrollable factors such as category growth or economic trends.
The bottom line is that in order to be truly effective, marketing measurement systems will always have to be highly customized, tuned to each organization’s specific objectives. There is no magic, out-of-the-box solution. But a combination of data integration and a single source for media measurement will get marketers closer to the Promised Land.
The Audience [Me]asurement 2.0 conference was an important platform for advancing the discussion around the next generation of measurement systems. We need more of these forums to continue to align around the more meaningful, useful components of a flexible measurement toolkit that marketers can apply in the specific context of the questions being asked, and the business that is asking them.
