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As the industry rolls into 2018, ACA spoke with comScore Canada’s General Manager, Brent Bernie; Bryan Segal, VP and Darrick Li, Senior Director, Sales, to ask them to take one last look back at 2017 and share goals for the year ahead. Read on for their advice to marketers for 2018.

ACA: What lesson from 2017 will you be applying to 2018?

From the November ACA Executive Forum, it was apparent from the discussions and the reactions in the crowd that accountability with media is becoming more and more important. Clients are asking their agencies, publishers, and measurement partners for more transparency around how hard their media dollars are working. comScore needs to help clients better understand the daisy chain of ad technologies, exchanges, and publisher networks that an advertising impression touches to derive the best evaluation of the most impactful mix of media to derive the greatest ROI.

ACA : Where should industry be focused/where will your company be focused for 2018?

Aside from the media transparency and accountability outlined above, the digital advertising industry requires more accurate data to help make better decisions. comScore will be focusing on data quality and making our data more timely to answer those burning questions. Two major areas include measurement of branded entertainment/content sponsorships and making comScore’s third-party audience segment data a critical piece in timely data targeting for advertisers and their agencies. We also intend to spend some time and effort against the challenge of demonstrating that all impressions are not equal when it comes to brand impact and performance. In addition, comScore is heavily focused on the development of cross-media measurement in Canada. This type of measurement is essential for the market, as evidenced by our work with Kantar and Numeris to enhance video audience measurement in Canada.

ACA : What advice do you have for client marketers as they start the new year?

Don’t be afraid to ask more questions from your partners. Find out where your media dollars are going to and the quality and value of audiences you are trying to reach. Are they being seen by real human beings? To people within your target audience? What proportion of your media dollars are going to advertising technologies? How can you better optimize your media spend to make every dollar work hard to capture brand awareness and conversions? If you don’t ask these questions and get more transparency, your dollars will increasingly go to waste. Do the math. The CPM is only the cost input, not the end value output. You need to further your understanding beyond the CPM – with viewabilty, demographic delivery, ad effectiveness, fraud, bot, data costs, ad tech costs, and more all being part of the equation. You might just find that a $25 CPM derives more value than a $12 CPM.