Blog

By Bob Reaume, Vice President, Policy & Research, ACA Canada’s broadcast regulator, the CRTC, is having a really good look right now at how the television system operates in this country with its upcoming hearing, “Let’s Talk TV”. Advertisers have a lot at stake. That’s why the ACA invited the Canadian Media Director’s Council to […]

By Nick Thakkar, Director, Strategic Sourcing, MDC Partners Inc. I’ve had the great fortune to work with marketers and procurement practitioners in various capacities. My career started in consulting which gave me an “external” view of some great organizations specific to marketing and procurement and how those functions co-exist. Then I was in the industry, […]

By Jessica Yared, ACA Last week the ACA hosted a 3-hour executive forum on digital media transparency, verification and auditing, with an equal mix of marketers, agency and media folks in attendance. That players from all sides attended, illustrates just how important the topic is these days.

We’re all familiar with the philosophical question, “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Striking parallels to this old adage can be drawn in our industry today, where many are asking a similar question relating to the effectiveness of ads in the digital environment. In light of concerns around ad viewability, brand safety and in-target delivery, many are now asking: “If an ad falls in the wrong place and no one has an opportunity to see it, does it make an impression?”

In other words, what is the value of an ad that doesn’t deliver an opportunity to be seen, or worse, is delivered next to brand unsafe content? How should we value an impression that reaches a consumer outside of the intended target?

In my role running Research at AudienceScience, I spend a lot of time talking to advertisers. While in most cases, their challenges, pain points, strategies, and goals broadly differ, the one term I am now consistently hearing out of the mouths of advertisers globally is “transparency.” From where I sit, “transparency” is the advertising buzzword of 2014 and advertisers are actively seeking how they can get more of it.

Not that advertisers asking for transparency is something new. Nearly all advertisers have some guarantee of transparency written into their agency contracts and smart advertisers have long known that transparency is essential to understanding what’s working, what isn’t, and how their organizations can improve their media spending.

We’ve heard all the hype about viewability and how it will be the savior for the digital world. The theory goes that with the Media Ratings Council (MRC) recently setting a standard definition, brands will have all the confidence they need to transition TV budget to online video (OLV). Although this is a great step in the right direction, brands need to know the truth – all OLV is not created equal.

The three key metrics advertisers must monitor to ensure their video execution parallels that of TV are viewability, audibility and ad size. On average, about 50-60% of most brands’ OLV media is actually achieving these three basic measures of execution. So if a brand equates TV to OLV, the media failing to meet those basic measures is essentially wasted.