THIRD ANNUAL SCREENS ISSUE - MediaPost

the way consumers watch TV
today. While the bulk of viewing
still occurs on the TV set,
media buyers are remiss to
discount new ways of viewing
— bingeing on libraries of
TV shows, watching on tablets,
viewing online and increasingly,
on cell phones.
It’s the job of the buyer,
and the job of the best buyers,
to optimize the differences
between all the other ways of
measuring an audience and the
currency of the demo to deliver
the best results for their clients.
“We are trying to think about
moving away from demo buying
because our greater vision
is about igniting communities
and people by shared passions,
so we think about buying audiences,
following content and
creating a social or cultural
impact,” Drucker says. “If you
just buy the demo, you are creating
big gaps.”
New Ways of Buying
When marketers enter a TV
transaction with a media
vendor, they’re coming to an
agreement to buy a certain
amount of eyeballs in a particular
age or gender range.
“But to think that’s all the buy
is being based on would be
naive. There is a lot of data we
are using to better target our
customers for our clients,” says
Rino Scanzoni, chief investment
officer for GroupM. That
includes sources such as MRI,
set-top box data, and even
shopper data from GroupM’s
Kantar Media, a division of parent
holding company WPP that
analyzes and monitors audiences
across mediums.
“A lot of the decisions on
which program and networks
to target come through more
sophisticated means and data
analysis,” Scanzoni says. The
amount of data emerging from
set-top boxes and Kantar Media
is exponentially better than
it was five years ago, he says.
Kantar’s shopper data, as an
example, gives GroupM a more
refined look at how purchase
decisions are influenced by ads.
But just as buying primarily
by demo leads to oversimplification,
there are risks with a
plethora of data, too. “You have
to make sure you don’t get
data paralysis because there is
so much of this stuff, and you
have to siphon through it and
see what is really going to make
a difference in the realities of
the TV market,” Scanzoni says.
Tools for Social Buzz,
Addressability in TV
Buying
Increasingly, marketers are
eager to pinpoint the impact of
social buzz on a show. That’s
why social media measurement
start-up Bluefin Labs is catching
the eye of many agencies.
Bluefin pairs social buzz for a
show and the commercials in
it on a per-episode basis, so
networks know which airing of
a show is generating chatter,
rather than just the aggregate
buzz for a certain week. That
kind of a breakdown goes much
further to understanding and
quantifying the social engagement
of particular shows at
particular times, MediaVest’s
Drucker says.
Digitas is another agency
betting on Bluefin Labs and
is considering including
Bluefin’s tools into its internal
audience measurement
tools, Digitas has said.
In fact, internal tools are vital
for agencies to work around the
demo problem. MediaVest, for
one, depends on proprietary
tools it has cobbled together inhouse.
That includes a program
that lets buyers fuse a variety of
databases to understand viewing
patterns. The result is a holistic
view of audience habits for use
in TV buying, Drucker says.
On the TV front, the promise
of addressability (targeting
diaper ads to new parents, for
instance) still exists as a way
to move beyond demo buying.
This can be achieved by
matching set-top box data with
third-party consumer insight
from Experian and Acxiom to
better pair households with
consumer profiles, especially in
satellite homes, Scanzoni says.
Cablers, too, are making strides
with addressability.
INCREASINGLY,
MARKETERS ARE
EAGER TO PINPOINT
THE IMPACT OF
SOCIAL BUZZ ON
A SHOW. THAT’S
WHY SOCIAL MEDIA
MEASUREMENT
START-UP BLUEFIN
LABS IS CATCHING
THE EYE OF MANY
AGENCIES.
Spring 2012 MEDIA MAGAZINE 31