Navigating Currency Options, Where to Start?

With streaming video rapidly gaining share of the advertising ecosystem, both buyers and sellers need to look internally to evaluate if their current market currencies, which power measurement and reporting solutions, are still best serving their needs. It may well be that they need to switch it up. The ecosystem, as well as currency options and choices, is ever evolving, so what worked for a company yesterday or today may not be the best fit for tomorrow.

Each measurement vendor on the market has its own strong suit. For example, for a broad reach-based national TV campaign, Nielsen may be a good choice based on their national TV coverage, many years of longitudinal data and panel-based approach. But if the goal is to measure and quickly adjust TV campaigns across linear and digital, providers such as VideoAmp and iSpot would likely be a stronger choice due to their reliance on near real-time data assets from multiple digital channels and their focus on audiences and engagement metrics.

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When there is a need to reevaluate, it can be difficult to know where to start an assessment process. Here are some things to keep in mind from the current state of the market perspective:

1. Not all currency and measurement data-provider vendors are the same:

From a data perspective, many of the measurement vendors do not have stable demographic sets or enough multi-year historical trends on audiences to be able to support reach commitments accurately. Therefore, advertisers may have to split TV budgets into multiple risk adjusted strategies and be ready to iterate based on outcomes.

2. A persistent lack of coordination among different currency and measurement vendors: 

Buy-side, sell-side and measurement vendors must agree to a common definition of demographics and basic audiences for media transactions, which is what Nielsen has provided over its long tenure. So far, what we have seen is more competition than cooperation among the various players. This creates an inconvenience if large advertisers must make buying decisions using multiple currencies, or even less streamlined, buy on one and measure on another.

3. Cost of switching or supporting new measurement vendors:

Over the years, a lot of internal tools, workflows, and processes were created based on Nielsen data. Much of that operational setup must now be expanded to support emerging currencies and measurement options end to end, for application across product packaging, deal structuring, forecasting, activation, and reconciliations. This expansion adds costs on all sides of the advertising ecosystem. However, once implemented, these investments can pay dividends into the future.

4. It’s critical to ask questions:

When it comes to working with currency providers directly, companies should not be afraid to ask detailed questions. Topics such as data refresh rates, aggregation schedules, variances in reported reach, and de-duplication methodologies should all be factored into a final decision. Additionally, it is imperative to understand how the user profile will match with a company’s first party data: through a data clean room, direct matching process or probabilistic method. And lastly, privacy and regulatory requirements must be clearly documented, particularly when running targeted ads to specific digital audiences.

5. Test, test, test!

If you feel lingering uncertainty about which currency might best for your needs, testing two different currencies and comparing the results using well-defined, brand-specific testing criteria is another option. However, testing could double the work for ops and buying teams, so it is important to weigh the value of that extra time and effort.

There is a lot to bear for individual organizations needing to go through this process on their own. Hopefully, in the near future, we, as an industry, will be able to rely on the Joint Industry Committee (JIC), the consortium formed by leading US broadcasters and agencies, who has proposed a set of standards for currency vendors. But until there is consensus, there is no arbiter of quality, consistency and stability among different currency

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Also catch: Episode 197 of The SalesStar Podcast: Customer and Revenue Acquisition Trends with Leise Roberts, Revenue Growth Consultant at Revenue Grid