Insights from the ANA Media and Measurement Conference

By Bill Duggan

ANA

The ANA just held our Media and Measurement Conference, virtually of course, presented by A+E Networks. I had the opportunity to co-host the event and learned so much! Below are takeaways from the seven conference speakers with whom I did a Q&A.

Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer at P&G: There may never be a better time for us to lead constructive disruption (creating value for everyone) and transform media into a powerful force for good and force for growth. A key step is to achieve equality in the media supply chain. The media supply chain includes marketers, agencies, production crews, and media providers. This aspiration means every link in the chain, at every level, reflects equal gender representation — 50 percent women, 50 percent men. This means race and ethnicity representation equal to the U.S. population — 13 percent Black, 18 percent Hispanic, 6 percent Asian-Pacific, 2 percent Native American — for a combined 40 percent multicultural. When we achieve this level of equality, evidence consistently points to better innovation, better problem solving, and more growth.

Allyson Witherspoon, VP, marketing communications and media at Nissan: Data-driven approaches are crucial to success in a hyper-competitive global economy. Big data has unlocked the advent of precision marketing — reaching the right consumer at the right time at the right moment in their shopping process with the right product. Data allows marketers to be more customer centric and better understand consumers with precision. Creatives can then take all this data on consumer wants and needs and build distinctive and relevant stories, creating emotional connections. Data, when harnessed properly, lives in the service of creativity. Data is the launchpad for creative. Creativity remains the most important contributor to sales.

Roseann Montenes, VP, precision and performance at A+E Networks: What’s next for audience targeting and attribution optimization, moving beyond the demo guarantee? Foot traffic was an example shared for a QSR client. Attention measurement is coming next, more specifically doing a guarantee against viewability, meaning that someone is in the home and watching the creative. Roseann announced a partnership A+E is doing with Anheuser-Busch and its agency, Dentsu, around attention measurement.

Lina Shields, chief media officer at Eli Lilly: Media has undergone a transformation at Lilly and media is now viewed as an investment (rather than an expense) that drives business value. Media enables the company to reach consumers differently, with a focus on the patient, and accelerates the ways they can get information around medicines. Media is a catalyst and driver of change. Lilly’s media transformation has put digital first, going from 84 percent linear TV to almost half digital/addressable. This has moved media from a fragmented view done on a brand by brand basis considered to be an expense to a portfolio view fueled by data providing a better experience to the consumer, elevated to the C-suite.

Geoff Ramsey, co-founder, chief evangelist at eMarketer: The “forced isolation” of COVID-19 has added one full hour to our average time spent with media each day. Digital video represents about 37 percent of all time spent with TV/digital video and is growing rapidly. Best practices for digital video advertising:

• Embrace the combination of connected TV and linear ad buys — and figure out ways to measure across both.
• Measurement can’t get to the next realm until it at least catches up with consumer behavior.
• Shift focus from brand safety to brand suitability. The same data science that enables you to avoid negative or inappropriate content can be used to find environments you want to be in, which tends to be relevant content that’s suitable to the brand.
• Figure out how to reach viewers of SVOD (Subscription video on demand), or ad free services.

Dave Morgan, CEO at Simulmedia: Data is the next battleground in trust and transparency. Data, more than anything else today in the digital advertising world, determines value. Data has become more important than media. Television is now increasingly data-driven (OTT, CTV). But data is complex and opaque by design. The amount of money spent on data is extraordinary, with little scrutiny. Buyers are overmatched. There is opacity and fraud. It’s key that marketers recognize that this is a problem and focus on stopping it. Don’t accept makegood and credits when fraud is discovered but ask difficult questions to understand why that happened. Assign someone the responsibility for stamping out data opacity and fraud.

Ben Jankowski, SVP of global media at Mastercard: The ANA Media Advisory Board was formed about a year ago to drive change in the industry. The group currently has media reform workstreams in five areas: the upfront, equality, transparency, KPIs, and commercial load.

1. The Upfront: What can we do to make the process better? Two examples — the broadcast year timing for the upfront works for few advertisers as most have calendar year fiscals; the financial flexibility in digital and spot TV is much greater than it is in network.
2. Equality: As Marc Pritchard said, a key step is to achieve equality in the media supply chain. That includes staffing at marketers, agencies, production crews, and media providers with race and ethnicity representation equal to the U.S. population.
3. Transparency: As an example, there is a difference in the amount of information that different industry players have (e.g., sellers have much more information than buyers).
4. KPIs: Create new measures; do better than simply buying on CPMs.
5. Commercial Load: Creating a better consumer experience; do fewer commercials result in greater consumer engagement?

Thanks to all the ANA Media and Measurement Conference speakers. Sessions can be viewed on-demand here.