In the wake of Facebook’s admitted ad view miscalculation and a continuing issue of closed doors on viewing metrics, brand advertisers and media executives alike are getting impatient for better digital ad verification.
That thinning patience was evident during an Advertising Week panel in New York that featured executives from Nielsen, Facebook, Visual IQ, and Hearts & Science, who admitted that CMOs are sick of the hype and misreporting of digital ad numbers. “There’s so much BS in the marketplace,” said Steve Hasker, Nielsen’s chief operating officer, according to Ad Age.
He added that marketers need to constantly “interrogate the claim” and find out where data is coming from, rather than relying on a platform’s own measurement metrics.
One problem, of course, is that the burgeoning online video measurement segment has both established and new companies jockeying for a better competitive position by trying to offer different data, or more data, in new ways to give their clients new perspectives into how their ads or content are performing.
That could be creating a problem of too much information – at least, in the view of Nielsen, which has been long established in the traditional TV ratings space. Media companies are not necessarily looking for more metrics, but rather a “refined set applied in a consistent manner regardless of the content type or platform,” Nielsen SVP for product leadership Jessica Hogue told the New York Times.
Applying some standardization to measurement could cut through a lot of the confusion, but might not solve the problem of insightful, reliable data. “There is very universal agreement that the industry needs to evolve to metrics that actually matter,” Carolyn Everson, Facebook VP of global marketing solutions, told the Times.
What that entails is still up for debate, but both the panel and other executives agreed that third-party measurement firms needed to be able to access data on major platforms such as Facebook.
For more:
- see this Ad Age article
- see this NYT article
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