There’s a whole lotta fragmentation going on in Canada – digital fragmentation, that is. Between visual social platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr taking up more of people’s time and the fact that content is increasingly being consumed on smartphones and tablets, Canadian agencies and brands are trying to figure out what this fragmentation means for them – and how it can be best measured.
Brent Bernie, president of comScore Media Metrix Canada, addressed this topic in his address at IAB Canada’s MIXX Canada 2013 event in Toronto on Thursday.
Bernie said there’s a greater need for all-channel measurement now that Canadians have become such a fragmented audience. Mobile usage, he said, accentuates that need.
Illustrating why it’s time to say sayonara to silo measurement – in which either TV, digital or magazine metrics are measured – and instead embrace cross-silo real-time measurement, he shared data about the way Canadians are consuming content today.
He pointed to comScore data about smartphone penetration in Canada, which shows that 62% of mobile users here have a smartphone. Although many media folks have claimed for the past several years that “this is the year of mobile,” Bernie is convinced that 2013 is truly the year of mobile as a usage device. From December 2011 to December 2012, he said smartphone penetration increased by 17 points in the Canadian market.
Bernie noted that non-siloed reporting should be used to provide a unified view of consumer behaviour. “Consumers don’t give a flip about the device,” he said. What they care about, he said, is the content and types of experiences they want to have. He proposed the solution involves the need for “de-duplicated measurement across all platforms.”
He also addressed the basic-yet-fundamental need for viewable impressions to be used as the standard for true cross-media comparability. These impressions will help align TV and digital media and create “apples-to-apples comparability,” he said.
And when it comes to choosing metrics to use with multiplatform planning and optimization, Bernie said evolving metrics such as view-through, ad hover and engagement time are effective ones to use.
