At Nielsen, we believe Audience is EverythingTM. And audiences no longer see a difference between traditional TV, streaming and digital. So your audience measurement shouldn’t either. To empower our clients with a comprehensive view of audiences today, we recently announced our latest initiative, Nielsen ONE. This single, cross-media solution will drive more comparable and comprehensive metrics across platforms, altering the advertising industry forever by providing a single currency for audience measurement. As you can imagine, news like this raises questions: What does this mean for the industry? How will my business be impacted?
To answer these questions and a host of others, Nielsen kicked off the launch of Nielsen ONE with a virtual industry event, The Future of Media Starts Here. The event featured an overview of the cross-media initiative, a buy-side fireside chat and a panel of industry leaders who are defining this next era of video content.
During the unveiling of our cross-media vision, Nielsen CEO David Kenny said, “Today is about the next phase of audience measurement, where we bring together key players in the industry. We look forward to putting [Nielsen ONE] under the spotlight to bridge the gaps in the industry.”
Fireside Chat with Unilever’s Luis Di Como
To underscore the advertiser’s need for greater comparability and flexibility across platforms, services, and devices, David sat down for a fireside chat with Unilever’s Luis Di Como, Executive Vice President of Global Media. During their conversation, they discussed the shift in consumer behavior accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and how the industry will benefit as they embrace one cross-media currency. Throughout the conversation, Luis suggested that advertisers follow this mantra, “one consumer, one budget, one measurement system,” ultimately calling for unified systems as the industry moves towards the future.
“There are benefits for both consumers and advertisers. When we [Unilever] have a unified system, we won’t bombard consumers with irrelevant messages. For advertisers, it creates less waste of your advertising spend. One consumer, one budget and one measurement system are crucial for the future of the industry,” said Luis.
Unilever has made its own strides in cross-media measurement: The brand recently launched People Data Centers, a solution that tracks consumer buying behaviors across multiple platforms. And Luis believes that a cross-media currency built on the key principles of privacy and safety, comparability across all channels, and campaign impact will empower the industry to truly understand the impact of their ad.
Industry Panel: Media’s Decision Makers Discuss Path to Cross-Media
David was then joined by top executives from the media industry to further discuss the challenges and elements necessary to achieve the holy grail of cross-media measurement. The panel featured prominent industry leaders from NBCUniversal, GroupM, Google and Mastercard. To kick off the conversation, panelists were asked how cross-platform measurement would allow for more collaboration between consumers, marketers and publishers.
“As an industry, we have to address the pressing challenges, namely finding a single source of measurement across distribution platforms. Together we’re in a great position to do that,” said Kirk McDonald, CEO for North America at GroupM.
Panelists agreed and echoed that collaboration would be critical for widespread adoption of a single metric for buying and selling media. By working together, the industry stands to gain better knowledge, insights and understanding of cross-platform measurement that will allow each entity to maximize their ad spend while allowing publishers to better monetize their content.
“Think about how liberated we’d feel when we have centralized cross-platform measurement. The future of advertising is how do you mobilize a consumer to improve a marketer’s business. It’s liberating us for the future,” said Linda Yaccarino, Chairman, Global Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal.
Consumers are becoming more complex due to the plethora of ways they consume media today. At the same time, it’s important to put the consumer first, as they ultimately drive revenue for marketers, agencies, publishers and buyers.
“Today we cannot measure the holistic view of the consumer. The consumer must come first, and right now the industry measures the consumer’s habits in fragments, which makes it difficult to measure the consumer journey. In the future, a single measurement currency must be centered around the consumer,” said Ben Jankowski, SVP of Global Media at Mastercard.
As the panel continued, panelists expressed their excitement about how Nielsen ONE can push the industry one step further into creating a better experience for consumers, advertisers and agencies.
“Nielsen ONE is a massive step forward in the industry. A solution like this would make audience measurement, so much easier and impactful for buyers and sellers. It will make the viewer experience better, and it’ll make advertisers’ outcomes more compelling,” said Tara Walpert Levy, VP of Agency & Brand Solutions for Google & YouTube.
If you missed the live stream of “The Future of Media Starts Here,” be sure to catch the on-demand recording, and learn more about Nielsen ONE.
