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Future of TV Briefing: YouTube makes its case for the TV ad industry’s measurement makeover
By Tim Peterson
This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at the measurement principles YouTube released on Tuesday and how the Google-owned video platform fits into the broader measurement overhaul.
- TrueView?
- TV industry’s joint measurement committee, Paramount’s potential BET sale, ESPN’s central streaming strategy and more
TrueView?
The key hits:
- YouTube has published a set of measurement principles that the platform hopes to become an industry baseline.
- YouTube wants the Media Rating Council’s viewable impression standard to be the basis for measuring impressions.
- YouTube’s principles are likely to be met with resistance by the traditional TV industry that has drafted its own measurement requirements.
As TV networks and streaming services sort out the overhaul of TV advertising’s measurement system, YouTube wants to make sure it’s not left sitting on the sidelines. And ad buyers want YouTube to be part of the process to deliver on the promise of true cross-platform TV and video measurement. How the Google-owned video platform fits into the new TV measurement landscape isn’t so straightforward, though.
“If we’re trying to look at a new cross-platform video measurement solution, if it doesn’t have YouTube, it’s not complete. Really, the challenge continues to be which version of measurement will win — or several of them might — and how much YouTube will be in charge of that,” said an agency executive. “It feels like very much a struggle right now as to who’s taking charge of this.”
In its bid to take a leadership position on the issue, YouTube plans to publish a set of principles on Wednesday that the platform believes should govern the third-party cross-platform measurement ecosystem. Unsurprisingly, the first principle demands that measurement providers “provide a unified view of audiences across TV, CTV/OTT, and online platforms,” according to a copy of the company blog post that was shared with Digiday.
“Our hope is that these five principles that we outlined for the industry really becomes a charter from which the industry can rally around to make sure that the ultimate solutions that get built are ones that serve the best interests of our marketers and our viewers,” Kate Alessi, managing director on Google’s YouTube and video solutions team, said in an interview.
As the agency executive quoted above indicated, the ultimate aim underpinning YouTube’s principles appears to have the support of ad buyers. “YouTube is the largest source of connected TV ad inventory, and it’s one of the first places a lot of our brands anchor their video plans. We’re obviously active with a lot of others in the premium video space, NBCUniversal among them, but we will value methodologies that measure cross-screen viewership and consumption of all content types wherever possible and wherever there’s third-party accreditation,” said Kevin Cahn, associate vp at digital agency Kepler.
However, YouTube has its work cut out for it with respect to getting the full industry to rally around some of its principles.
The impression baseline principle
Among YouTube’s principles is a call for the industry to use the Media Rating Council’s viewable impression …read more
Source:: Digiday
