Caroline Oates says while everyone wants a single source of truth style of cross-media measurement, she doubts Australia’s media and advertising industry is ready to embrace a costly cross-media measurement solution such as the UK’s Project Origin or Halo in the US. Oates was speaking at the IAB Video Summit, where measurement was widely discussed.
Progress to standardise and streamline the measurement of media has traditionally been patchy in Australia, and one of the industry’s leading executives believes that the ‘holy grail’ – a true cross-media measurement framework – remains a pipe dream for now.
Caroline Oates, the head of YouTube and programmatic sales at Google, has been at the forefront of video measurement and trading in Australia for more than a decade.
At an IAB Video Summit in Sydney on Wednesday, Oates said that although advertisers, media buyers and media owners all agree that a cross-media measurement solution is ideal, there is neither the advertiser-led will or funding model to make it a reality, unlike efforts in the UK and US.
“The bit that I think is really notable about some of those initiatives is they are very advertiser led. If I look at the UK, you’ve got ISBA and advertisers really driving that conversation, which is forcing compromise and the coming together of all the various other players,” she said. “It’s also really interesting that in the UK they are looking at a model where advertisers will pay as a percentage of their media.
“Everyone agrees it’s important, but when it comes to everybody – not just the publishers – to put skin in the game to make that a reality, I’m not sure we’re at that point yet, if I’m being really honest.”
Origin, which began in 2019, is only just beginning trials this year. It aims to create a platform that measures the reach and frequency of advertising campaigns across digital and broadcast media, but crucially does not have the backing of TV broadcasters, who are concerned that comparing TV ads with digital ads dilutes their value.
Oates believes it’s an even harder sell in a market the size of Australia.
“We’re a smaller market, there are smaller ad dollars than there are in the US in the UK. So to fund a project in which some of these fixed costs don’t drop significantly with the size of the market – there are some practical considerations to consider.”
Do media metrics even matter?
Cross-media measurement has been a bone of contention between various factions in the Australian media and advertising industry, particularly between broadcast TV and digital video platforms.
Earlier this year, a majority of the big names in streaming and online video joined the Video Futures Collective, which has been spearheaded by Foxtel. It aims to produce an alternative measurement solution to the current TV broadcasting and streaming currency offered by OzTAM, which produces Total TV ratings, VOZ and is testing Streaming VOZ that aims to measure de-duplicated linear TV, live streaming and BVOD audiences.
Meanwhile, earlier this year OzTAM partnered with the IAB to provide BVOD audience data for the IAB’s digital video currency Ipsos Iris, which measures digital video audiences across multiple apps and devices.
Even if the Australian industry is unable to sing from a single measurement hymn sheet, finding commonality and combining different currencies, where possible, could be a positive step forward.
“Being able to unify more of those metrics in the future, even if it’s across total TV and video streaming, is really powerful and brings value,” Magnite director of platforms Maddy Mewing said. “I think it’s come a long way, but we still have got a long way to go.”
Fixing media metrics is only a small part of the problem as there has been a gradual shift away from ‘vanity metrics’, argued SBS national digital sales manager Brett Islaub.
“We’ve come quite a ways from looking at metrics that are vanity based for the sake of ticking boxes,” he told the IAB Video Summit. “We’re now starting to shift into actual real world metrics.
“From a brand perspective, it’s about understanding what works in terms of the metrics that they’re looking for to create success, because we can all get drowned in digital metrics and every client has a different set of KPIs.”
Paul Balbo, Meta’s industry lead for automotive, CPG and QSR, takes it a step further, saying: “For us, it’s about getting closer and closer to business metrics. So moving away from media metrics and focusing on what are the business KPIs…the closer you get to business outcomes, the closer you are getting to the source of truth.”