The Advanced Advertising Summit panel Measuring Results looked at the latest ways to measure campaign performance, from counting impressions to determining return on investment.
Sean Cunningham, president and CEO of the Video Advertising Bureau, moderated. He asked the panelists to define advanced advertising. Leslie Wood, iSpot.tv chief research officer, described it as the tools that were built for digital that are increasingly factoring into TV buys. “Across the board, we are bringing the digital world into TV,” she said.
Erica Barnes, A+E Networks senior director, audience innovation, spoke about advertiser aims varying from target age and gender, to something more specific like consumers who ride bicycles. “Our industry is evolving so much,” she said, “with brands at different stages of evolution.”
As the conversation progressed, Mohammed Chughtai, global head of advanced TV at MiQ, mentioned the quality of data decreasing, causing a trust issue with the user. “The lack of trust in digital will happen to the addressable TV space,” he said. “The same audience is being recycled.”
Barnes spoke about A+E offering business outcome guarantees to build trust with partners. “We want to move away from general reach impressions,” she said.
She spoke about a women’s health brand planning to advertise on Lifetime, but A+E research saw that it would pop in a few shows on History. The brand went with the new plan, and Barnes spoke of “unbelievable numbers” for the campaign.
Larry Allen, VP and general manager, data & addressable enablement, Comcast Advertising, said there can be pushback from advertisers set in the traditional ways of buying ads. There used to be one way to buy television, he said, and now there are multiple ways. It can be a lot to sort out.
“Let the data tell you what is logical now,” he said. “Before, we didn’t have the data.”
Cunningham brought up whether AI will emerge as a major factor in the ad game. “Absolutely yes, AI is going to play a part,” said Allen. “But the human has to be the copilot. Or AI has to be the copilot to the human, depending on your perspective.”
Added Barnes, “There’s a lot of nuance that is required for it to be truly effective.”
