Ian Whittaker, Media & Tech Analyst and Founder of Liberty Sky Advisors, and Andy Brown, CEO at The Attention Council (and former CEO and Chair at Kantar Media) have co-authored a vision paper in our sister publication The Media Leader called ‘How TV networks capitalise on the digital stumble’ and make the case that wasted advertising costs the global industry $2.25 Trillion and a major contribution to that waste is the absence of a unified cross-media measurement solution that advertisers are happy with. The paper suggests that shareholder value is being depressed across the media industry and infers that better measurement will unlock growth.
The paper, which you can view in full here, begins by outlining the rush of Private Equity investment into research/measurement companies and later reviews some of the measurement innovation that is shifting the TV part of the media industry forward – from cross-platform to better attribution and attention measurement.
The key takeaways [in our opinion] are that:
1/ If you accept the figures for wasted advertising and the thesis that cross-media measurement would remove much of the waste, there is a clear growth opportunity to be unlocked.
2/ Future growth in the media industry is closely linked to improved measurement – making measurement ‘growth critical’.
3/ The assertion that television will be a big winner from cross-media measurement – and the paper argues that television will grow its share of the digital advertising marketplace (where so much of the growth opportunity is, of course, including in video).
The authors believe that good cross-screen measurement will not be enough to unlock the growth that is needed, and the focus must turn to cross-media solutions.
Whittaker and Brown outlined their data, and presented their argument, at The Future of Media conference on Wednesday (in London). Brown was adamant that the television industry needs to be brave and embrace cross-media measurement.
Read the full vision paper here.
