1. PAGE 1
How Integrated Video Planning Can Transition
Advertising from ‘Upfronts’ to ‘Allfronts’
With a special contribution from John Muszynski, Chief Investment Officer, Spark SMG
Total Video
3. PAGE 3
All media – including TV – are going digital. While TV remains the leading media channel
for the vast majority of consumers, viewing time has largely been flat over the past several
years while digital video viewing continues to explode. Not only have many viewers
become more comfortable watching originally-scripted content on their computers, but
they are also rapidly increasing their viewing on smartphones and tablets. And if these
platforms weren’t enough to fulfill people’s viewing desires, there is also a considerable
amount of activity happening on other over-the-top (OTT) digital devices such as Apple
TV, Google Chromecast, Roku and even gaming consoles.
It’s no surprise that this constant accessibility of content on multiple devices has altered
consumer dynamics in profound ways. While increased availability has driven sizeable
gains in incremental media consumption – a net positive for marketers and media
companies – the potential to cannibalize existing media channels and disrupt the status
quo can also be disconcerting. In the most extreme cases, these shifts are leading to
some “cord-cutting” and the abandoning of cable TV subscriptions altogether. More
commonly, however, we are seeing an increasing share of originally-scripted content
consumption moving to other platforms, making certain viewers more efficient to reach
through digital means than through traditional linear TV advertising.
Why haven’t these shifts provoked a more significant crisis? In part, because the
broadcast and cable networks are experiencing net revenue gains as these changes
unfold. Digital video frequently offers an attractive financial return for content owners
who make their content available via broadband for on-demand viewing, which they are
monetizing through advertising or licensing agreements with distributors such as Netflix.
The good news for content owners is that rampant digital media proliferation is a value-
creating event for their businesses. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t considerable value
currently being left on the table, as today’s complex and fragmented viewing environment
has made accounting for viewing behavior orders of magnitude more difficult.
Acknowledging the realities of this emerging digital paradigm, a new approach is
needed to account for video viewing wherever, whenever and however it occurs. New
data about consumers and their video consumption needs to be accessible and solve
client challenges in a way that’s good for the media business. This approach must be
truly integrated, putting the viewer at the center and providing a unified accounting of
their media consumption behavior across all screens, to facilitate smarter buying and
selling of advertising.
5. PAGE 5
Total Video is a viewer-centric approach to measuring video that accounts for viewing
audiences on multiple platforms in a way that leverages the panel-based approach
of legacy TV measurement systems but in combination with the best advanced digital
measurement methods – including the combination of large scale panel-based systems
with census-level data from millions of TV set-top boxes, web and app tagging, etc. –
to deliver a comprehensive and unified accounting of video viewing audiences. It provides
for a holistic measurement of video that surpasses what legacy systems by themselves
currently allow, including:
1. A SINGLE, UNDUPLICATED AUDIENCE METRIC. A truly integrated cross-platform
view is needed to demonstrate the full size of a media company’s audience and
plan across media platforms, including the ability to deliver unified metrics for reach,
frequency and GRPs.
2. UNIFIED DEMOGRAPHY ACROSS PLATFORMS. Media planners plan against
demographics and need to be able to do this for all video viewing across platforms
if they are to be able to take full advantage of the available inventory that meets their
planning objectives.
3. HOLISTIC ACCOUNTING OF ALL VIDEO VIEWING BEHAVIOR. Measurement must
be inclusive of all video that is consumed – including OTT viewing – whenever and
wherever it is consumed, since this represents monetizable inventory.
4. SCALABLE MEASUREMENT OF PLATFORMS AND AUDIENCES. The approach
must be scalable to an increasing number of platforms and have the granularity to
report meaningful audiences for content from larger media companies and for niche
audiences covering long tail content providers. This scalability must be predicated on
census-level data assets incorporated into the methodology, because panels alone
cannot reach the level of required reporting granularity.
5. FLEXIBLE TO FIT THE FUTURE OF ADVERTISING. The long term future of TV
advertising goes beyond linear; dynamic ad insertion will become a norm as this market
begins to look more like today’s highly targetable digital advertising environment.
The future of ad measurement is also evolving rapidly to tie video exposure more
directly to in-store sales performance.
7. PAGE 7
Total Video’s methodological underpinning is comScore’s proprietary multi-source audience
de-duplication model. Traditional approaches to multi-platform measurement have relied
solely on a single-source panel; while a sound approach in theory, it does not work in
practice given the inability to effectively scale measurement beyond two media platforms.
Recruiting a single sub-set of panelists for two platforms is both difficult and cost-
prohibitive. For a third platform, let alone a fourth or fifth, at the level needed to produce
de-duplicated audience estimates for individual media companies is simply unrealistic.
comScore’s solution combines a single-source calibration panel with its own uniquely
rich census-level data assets to determine cross-platform audience overlap for any
combination of platforms at the individual media level. The richness of the census data
combined with the depth of consumer panel data provides common touchpoints between
any combination of platforms to power the de-duplication system. As a result, comScore
today has a proven, scalable approach for cross-platform measurement that has been
used to measure across multiple platforms.
Solving for this de-duplication dilemma is critically important. The fundamental building
blocks of media planning are demographics, reach, frequency, and GRPs, but none of these
metrics can be accurately calculated in a cross-platform environment without the ability
to produce a single unduplicated audience metric. Without de-duplication of audiences,
overall campaign reach will necessarily be overstated and frequency will be understated.
Of course, some might discount the need for true unduplicated reach and frequency
metrics. To begin with, their derivative metric, the GRP, is currently considered additive
in the buying and selling of media across platforms. And for practical purposes, this
approach may be reasonable when online video audiences remain relatively small and
have little overlap with TV. Another practice that apparently circumvents the need for true
de-duplication is the use of Random Duplication, a method that imputes deduplication
using a one-size-fits-all formula. It should be noted, of course, that this method relies on an
assumption about how audiences overlap that does not necessarily correspond to reality.
Ultimately marketers want to answer the question “Who am I reaching and how often?”,
which means that an accurate reflection of reach and frequency is critical from their point
of view. A system that enables actual (and not inferred) de-duplication of audiences
across screens allows these questions to be answered accurately in a way that aligns
with their media plan’s objectives. Applying anything less than this approach means
flawed input metrics, which produces sub-optimal results that leaves money on the table
for both media buyers and sellers.
9. PAGE 9
With the Total Video measurement infrastructure in place, media planners and buyers will
get access to new inventory, be able to reach the right audiences more efficiently, and
design more effective media plans. Despite such compelling value drivers, transitioning from
established planning and buying models to something new does not happen overnight.
Taking the leap towards a Total Video future must begin with establishing the value of
digital video on its own merits. Because each fragment of premium video inventory today
is dwarfed by overall TV viewing, they are often sold as spare parts for a larger TV buy.
Breaking down the digital media silos means that digital video inventory can be combined
into more compelling ad packages.
Here are four recommendations for how planners and buyers can begin to adopt a Total
Video approach:
MEASURE CROSS-PLATFORM IN AN INTEGRATED WAY TO QUANTIFY
INCREMENTAL REACH FROM DIGITAL
comScore measured ten cross-platform advertising campaigns incorporating some
combination of TV and digital (video, display and mobile) advertising, which provide
some useful basis for analysis in this paper. Across the campaigns studied, TV generally
accounted for the highest reach – in large part because this tends to be the primary
advertising channel for large brand advertisers. However, for each campaign, digital
media was able to deliver meaningful incremental reach that TV alone could not efficiently
deliver. The average TV campaign reached 49 percent of the population, while digital
platforms provided an average incremental reach of 5.8 percentage points.
This incremental reach showed wide variation across campaigns, ranging from less
than one percent to 16 percent, likely the result of varying distributions of ad spend by
platform. Still, on average, nearly 1 in 8 persons reached by the campaigns were exposed
exclusively via digital platforms, highlighting the importance of these channels in delivering
against campaign objectives where TV may be limited or inefficient.
#1
10. PAGE 10
59.2%
47.0%
19.2%
2.1%
Frozen Vegetable Brand: Cross-Platform Reach Over Time for a Particular Campaign
Source: comScore Study of 10 Cross-Platform Ad Campaigns, U.S., 2012-2013
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1 1-2 1-3 1-4 1-5 1-6 1-7 1-8 1-9 1-10 1-11 1-12 1-13 1-14
WEEK
12.2%
Total TV Web Online Video
The study also examined the incremental reach by channel for the duration of each
campaign. In the example of a campaign for a frozen vegetable brand below, the
campaign’s cumulative reach via TV reached a plateau halfway through the campaign,
providing no significant additional reach despite continued spend after this point.
However, the incremental reach provided by digital platforms (in this case, web and
online video) continued to increase even after TV reach had flattened, resulting in a 12.2
percentage point increase over the course of the 14-week campaign.
16.0%
12.2%
3.2%
7.2%
6.5%
6.4%
5.8%
3.4%
1.5%
0.8%
0.8%
Incremental Reach Provided by Digital Platforms vs. TV Alone
Source: comScore Study of 10 Cross-Platform Ad Campaigns, U.S., 2012-2013
1
2
3
4
5
AVG
6
7
8
9
10
11. PAGE 11
Adopting this holistic view of a campaign and evaluating reach in an integrated manner,
rather than in respective media silos, enables brands to quantify how many incremental
reach points they are able to generate through digital when the reach curve for TV plateaus.
PROVIDE A COMBINED VIEW OF DIGITAL PLATFORMS TO EXTEND REACH
AND BUILD FREQUENCY BEYOND TV CAMPAIGNS
Digital media companies have been vying for TV dollars for years, with many of the larger
properties having promoted their ability to deliver reach on par with TV. Broadcasters
and cable networks want to retain their budgets by expanding their total GRP base by
combining TV GRPs with digital GRPs. Both seek to provide advertisers with a more
complete accounting of their audience. With reach such an important consideration
among the largest brand advertisers, it is understandable that media companies seek to
measure their entire audience across all platforms where consumers enjoy their content.
However, the comprehensive view of a media seller’s digital audience is typically limited to
their view of reach on the desktop web universe, ignoring the very important consideration
of their mobile audiences. A TV media company’s total reach is typically limited to
programming that is exactly the same on TV and on digital platforms, ignoring the rich
content that is provided for consumers beyond traditional TV. Accounting for a media
company’s total unduplicated reach – whether desktop and mobile for digital media and
TV, desktop and mobile for TV companies – can fully convey the value to advertisers in a
way that is not possible with today’s legacy measurement systems.
An analysis of comScore data for the Top 25 U.S. Digital Media Properties (ranked by
Reach of their Total Digital Population) shows that their average total combined (i.e.
unduplicated) reach was 46% – a full 11 percentage points higher than their reach on
desktop alone. Allowing for this view can produce reach numbers that put digital media
within closer consideration of TV. And these numbers can be even more dramatic when
examining the reach among a particular audience. For example, 18-34 year olds had
an average combined reach of 55% on these Top 25 Properties – a full 15 percentage
points higher than on desktop alone.
#2
12. PAGE 12
QUANTIFY THE RELATIVE IMPACT AND ROI OF EACH CHANNEL
TO OPTIMIZE MEDIA ALLOCATIONS
The distribution of GRPs for the cross-platform campaigns analyzed skews heavily
towards TV, and with good reason given its clear ability to deliver audiences at scale.
However, as reach curves build on TV and reach a point of diminishing returns, an
advertiser must assess other available media channels in order to maximize reach and
optimize expenditure.
For the ten campaigns analyzed, there was a strong correlation (r² = .8073) between the
percentage of the campaign’s GRPs that were digital and its incremental reach. While
this finding is fairly intuitive, it nevertheless establishes the value that digital GRPs provide
and how they can be used to extend reach in a meaningful way.
By simply adopting this integrated view of audiences across desktop and mobile,
digital media companies can better articulate their reach-based value proposition for
marketers in a way that is not only more competitive with TV, but also in a way that works
alongside TV. This approach can be extended to digital video more specifically, since
marketers often rely more heavily on sight-sound-and-motion for reach-building and brand
awareness. Given the better ability to target specific audiences using digital video, brands
might also use this as a means of building frequency more efficiently.
If the media-buying conversation is ever to change from its current TV-centric approach,
it will ultimately require that digital claim its rightful consideration in the marketing mix.
That conversation will gain momentum as digital platforms band together and flex their
collective muscle.
#3
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Desktop Mobile Total Digital Population
Total Audience Age 18-34
35% 39%
46%
40%
44%
55%
Average Reach Among Top 25 Digital Media Properties by Platform
Source: comScore Media Metrix Multi-Platform, U.S., Feb 2014
13. PAGE 13
The brand supplemented its TV campaign by leveraging its digital channels and
successfully extended the reach of its campaign by 12 incremental percentage points.
So by utilizing simple metrics like calculating Reach per GRP, marketers can make much
smarter allocation decisions and deliver significant value for their brands that cannot be
achieved through a more siloed view of media allocations.
The ability to extend reach via digital GRPs can be valuable, but how does a marketer know
when to shift expenditure? One method of making such a determination is to calculate the
average yield in reach per 100 GRPs. In the frozen vegetable brand campaign, this metric was
calculated across channels. The brand had obtained a strong reach from TV of 47 percent but
found that online campaign channels were more efficient at delivering incremental reach per
100 GRPs at approximately 1.8 for web and online video ads vs. 1.4 for TV.
Online Video
Web
TV
1.82
1.81
1.39
Average Reach Points Generated by 100 GRPs
Source: comScore Study of 10 Cross-Platform Ad Campaigns, U.S., 2012-2013
Correlation Between the Incremental Reach and Percentage of GRPs from Digital
Source: comScore Study of 10 Cross-Platform Ad Campaigns, U.S., 2012-2013
18%
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
IncrementalReachfromDigital
Percentage of GRPs from Digital
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%
Campaigns Linear (Campaigns)
R2
=0.80729
14. PAGE 14
Digital media channels can be very useful in developing media plans for these specific
audience segments. It is also instructive to see how digital campaigns reach these
specific audience targets in practice. For example, across the ten cross-platform
campaigns analyzed, wide variation in reach was observed by demographic group for the
different media platforms.
While digital platforms are generally perceived to more efficiently reach younger
demographic segments, it’s important for advertisers to understand how this might differ
depending on the brand and type of campaign being run. In one campaign for a cereal
brand, we found that the campaign had the highest digital-only reach among persons
under 18. However, in another campaign involving a frozen vegetables brand, the 45-54
age segment showed the highest digital-only reach.
USE DIGITAL TO MORE EFFICIENTLY BUILD REACH AMONG
SPECIFIC DEMOGRAPHIC TARGETS
Optimization benefits can become even more powerful when they are focused on specific
target audiences, because digital has the ability to reach certain valuable demographics
– particularly Millennials (i.e. 18-34 year olds) – significantly more efficiently than others.
In fact, Millennials are considerably higher than average consumers of online video,
spending 48 percent more time doing so than the typical internet user. On important
channels such as YouTube, Netflix and Hulu, they also spend considerably more time and
can be reached much more efficiently.
#4
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
YouTube Netflix Hulu
Total Audience Age 18-34
79%
19% 9%
93%
26%
13%
Reach Among Total Digital Population for YouTube, Netflix and Hulu
Source: comScore Media Metrix Multi-Platform, U.S., Feb 2014
15. PAGE 15
So digital provides a compelling argument that it can efficiently deliver on their reach
and frequency objectives, and it may help brands be particularly effective in doing so
among target demographics. This opens the door to more strategic cross-platform
media planning that aligns with and complements TV campaigns.
All Persons
Males <18
Males 18-24
Males 25-34
Males 35-44
Males 45-54
Males 55+
Females <18
Females 18-24
Females 25-34
Females 35-44
Females 45-54
Females 55+
12.2% 3.4%
5.0% 14.8%
10.0% 2.6%
9.8% 1.6%
8.9% 1.7%
16.6% 1.1%
14.0% 0.8%
1.6% 11.8%
10.8% 2.8%
14.4% 2.5%
15.4% 1.9%
22.6% 1.7%
13.6% 0.9%
Frozen Vegetables Brand
Digital-Only (i.e. non-TV) Reach by Demographic Segment
Source: comScore Study of 10 Cross-Platform Ad Campaigns, U.S., 2012-2013
Cereal Brand
These findings suggest that while digital can build incremental reach among younger
consumers, marketers should not limit their thinking of digital as only effective in reaching this
segment. Because digital platforms enable better audience targeting than linear TV, marketers
can leverage these technologies to build reach among any demographic segment.
16. PAGE 16
FROM INSIGHTS TO ACTION:
Activating the Total
Video Approach in Media
Buying and Selling
17. PAGE 17
Adopting a more integrated view of media – including a Total Video approach
to sight-sound-and motion content and advertising – can mean considerable value
creation for media buyers and sellers. But simply thinking differently is not sufficient;
there must be a willingness to take action and adapt.
John Muszynski, Chief Investment Officer at Spark SMG, shares his perspective
on the current state of video measurement and why a Total Video approach is
needed now more than ever:
In 2006, around the dawn of YouTube and online video in general, I said “While TV is not
extinct, the upfront as we knew it has come to an end, yielding the birth, this year, of a true
video upfront, which will adapt and transform because consumers say so. I urge you all:
up your game in terms of engagement metrics. You show us, prove to us that people pay
attention to you and we’ll do the same.”
Here we are eight years later, and I find myself uttering the exact same words. The biggest
difference being, of course, that the consumer has evolved significantly since the early
days of online video. Today, traditional TV viewing is down marginally, while we are seeing
across-the-board gains in time-shifted, online, mobile and over-the-top video viewing. But
the measurement systems have not yet caught up.
comScore’s Total Video approach is a positive step in the right direction in the quest for
where video measurement needs to go and has the foundation of the right technological
and methodological infrastructure to make it a reality. My own philosophy on the matter
echoes comScore’s Five Principles of Total Video measurement. We need to put all video
platforms on equal footing through a measurement system that provides for a single,
unduplicated audience metric and consistent demographics across screens. The system
must be scalable for both audiences and screens and rooted in the “now” – but with a
vision for the future.
Making this measurement system a reality requires the collective efforts of the media
industry with folks on both sides of the table playing a role and agreeing on common
ground. We must all demand that measurement begins with putting the consumer – not
the platform – at the center of the approach. But we must also recognize that solving all of
these measurement challenges is not easy, and so we must look for progress rather than
perfection. It is also important that those who wish to see this measurement system unfold
be willing to support its advancement through strategic investments and a willingness to
experiment. And finally, we must also be mindful of quantifying the impact and ROI of these
investments to support the continued shift of budgets towards digital platforms.
If we all put a little skin in the game, together we can forge a Total Video ecosystem that will
benefit media buyers and sellers alike.
18. Conclusion
Moving towards a Total Video future can ultimately improve the economic equation for
everyone within the media ecosystem. It means more opportunities for media companies
to deliver and monetize content and improved ability for advertisers to efficiently and
effectively reach their target audiences.
But reaping these gains will depend on taking concrete steps to reshape the future of
video advertising. That means adopting a viewer-centric approach that aligns with the
way advertisers want to buy and content owners want to sell advertising. As this happens,
all video content can be accounted for and used as a basis of transaction according to
quality of the inventory and the unduplicated audience reached – not merely on the basis
of the individual device on which it is consumed.
Digital should be thought of as both complementary to TV and as a significant part of
the media mix in its own right, but it will not warrant that consideration until it can be
quantified, valued and understood within the same measurement framework as TV. There
are several steps that media buyers and sellers can take today to bring digital into better
alignment with TV and allow it to be valued appropriately.
TV content isn’t going away, it’s going everywhere. And that means the media industry
must now begin its transition of measurement from TV to Total Video.
Visit www.comscore.com/TotalVideo to learn more about comScore Total Video, proven
advancements in cross-platform measurement and what’s next.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Andrew Lipsman
+1 (312) 775-6510
press@comscore.com
