There’s never been as much of a need for a complete view of the consumer as there is today. And so when Steve Hasker, Global President, Nielsen, took the stage during the Measuring the Total Audience session during Advertising Week, he emphasized the transitional power that media has and how Nielsen’s innovations are helping all players in the industry—from advertisers to content creators to programmers—get a line of sight on their best consumer.
“I’ll start this off with a quote from retired U.S. Amy General Eric Shinseki, who said, ‘If you don’t like change, you’re going to hate irrelevancy even more,’” said Hasker.
Hasker noted the vibrancy of media, all media, as a central part of consumer’s lives, but recognized a wave of platforms and devices that has caused a technological tidal shift.
“Consumers spend over 64 hours per week using media and about 38 hours of that is spent on video—that’s a second job,” noted Hasker.
Hasker said that within the current media ecosystem, there has been a parting of the seas, with advertisers being increasingly covetous of the young consumers. However, some advertisers take a more thoughtful approach when trying to reach this oft-fickle age group.
Hasker noted, though, that successful campaigns take into account all media—audio, video and text—in a sophisticated way that doesn’t marginalize young consumers. However, he said the industry still has a lot of work to do if the goal is to monetize these young people.
“There has to be significant innovation to get young consumers to pay for content,” said Hasker.
To do so, Hasker said, the industry needs to have a reliable measurement solution in order to seamless measure users across devices and platforms, which is where Nielsen’s Total Audience Ratings come into play.
Total Audience will leverage comparable metrics across these platforms and will be a simple set of metrics in order for the industry to see total consumption of both content and advertisements in a way that business decisions can be made on with reassurance.
Hasker said Total Audience will help the industry move forward.
“It gives us the ammunition to move beyond C3/C7 ratings. It enables us to get buyers and sellers of media to update the C3/C7 metric,” said Hasker, who noted Nielsen’s history of being a driver of progress.
“When I look back at the last 3 or 4 years—from Total Ad Ratings, to streaming measurement, to Digital Ad Ratings—I will stand our innovation against any other media measurement company,” said Hasker.
