“What gets measured gets done.” It’s a popular axiom of modern management theory gurus.
But when it comes to understanding the current state of video advertising in Canada, a slight twist makes the expression more accurate: What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get done.
Content sponsored by Videology
Canadians still love their televisions but are also watching more and more video content across screens, be it desktop, laptop, tablet or phone. This presents both challenges and opportunities for advertisers, but recent research from Videology, Rogers and Marketing magazine shows many Canadian marketers have been slow to update their advertising strategies to follow consumers across screens. The lack of a coherent system to measure campaign performance is a key reason why.
The report, “Consumers Lead Marketers on Path to Cross-Screen Convergence,” surveyed more than 1,000 Canadian consumers and 104 marketers about the rapidly changing world of video advertising. Fully half of Canadian marketers say digital video is something they work with or think about every day, but they haven’t actually come up with a digital video strategy to reach consumers.
“Advertisers are reluctant to change how they do things, or where they spend their money if they’re unable to measure the effectiveness of those actions and that spending,” said Ryan Ladisa, vice-president sales at Videology Canada. “And right now in Canada the absence of a single unified system to measure video campaign performance across screens appears to be a major impediment to converged video buying strategies.”
Certainly the numbers in the Videology study indicate measurement is a concern for marketers.
•Asked about the challenges of video advertising today, 48% said measuring campaign performance and 37% said measuring audiences across all video screens—the number one and number two answers.
•Asked to identify the single biggest challenge, measurement was number one again, with 18%.
At a roundtable discussion with industry experts following the release of the research, the consensus was that measurement was indeed an important hurdle the video advertising industry needs to clear in Canada.
After the panel, one of those experts, MediaCom’s chief client officer Kevin Johnson, elaborated a little more on what’s holding us back and how we can move forward.
Who should be leading the push toward improved measurement?
Certainly it is for the CMDC to help raise and push forward the need for better measurement and start the dialogue in these areas. And I think they are making a concerted effort as an industry representative to say, ‘Hey guys, in order to deliver more, better, faster for clients here are things we need to talk about.’ ”
The U.S. is ahead of Canada on measurement. Why can’t we just do what they are doing?
Typically we do take U.S. research and there are some instances to translate those to Canadian best practices. But you have to be careful in terms of where you are doing that. The best data for us is, in most cases, Canadian based data so you can dig in and look at Canadian nuances.
But isn’t the underlying infrastructure the same as in Canada?
There are some technical differences. With TV for example, the platform is very different, the data is built differently and the ratings behind that are very different. I don’t believe that we can assume that because they are doing it in the U.S. it is straight translation into Canada. But I don’t think we should ignore it because we are not that different.
What worries you the most about this?
There are some challenges. Significantly, who is paying for it because ultimately money becomes an issue. We’re talking about a new form of measurement, and there are costs to implement that—the way it is done, how it is brought to market. Who is going to pay for that? Is it clients? Is it the agencies or is it the vendors themselves? But I think we can’t allow funding to slow down the process. We need to figure out a way to fund it. We have to answer it or 10 years from now we will be in the same position and that will be very bad.
What about signs of progress?
Never before have I seen so much dialogue about raising the issue. And I think dialogue brings investigation and unearthing where we are versus where we should be. Whether it is the CMDC, the IAB, the ICA or the CMA, all of these groups are having dialogue about how we can become better. How we can move further, quicker, smarter in terms of the information and data that we are putting in front of advertisers and in front of vendors and the agencies.
