asiCast 183: Key messages from the 2024 asi International Conferences
There was undoubtedly a buzz around the annual gathering of the global audience measurement community when they met this year in Venice. This was because, as the conference progressed, there was an increased recognition of progress being made on a number of fronts which contributed to discussions during the breaks that were even more animated than usual.
In this asiCast, two of the session chairs, Katherine Page of Katherine Page Media Research Consultancy and our Research Director, Richard Marks, discuss some of their main takeaways. If you weren’t able to join us in Venice, this will bring you up to speed and, if you were there, please let us know what you think we may have missed or if there is anything you disagree with.
At the end of the Joint Session chaired by Katherine and featuring issues of concern to both the audio and video market, Richard outlined some of the key questions that we hoped to address over the following days. They discuss the persistent problem of the misuse of media terminology – both in terms of media definitions and measurement definitions.
Our thanks to GfK and Nielsen for their confinued support of the International Radio & Audio and Television & Video Conferences.
In the Joint Session Katherine also had an important panel discussion around the development of international standards and the extent to which these would be driven by regulation. Some of the implications of these developments need to be considered carefully and it is important that the industry engages with these issues. Will international standards inevitably default to MRC standards and is the wider industry content with this?
Katherine and Richard then turn to consider whether there was any indication that we were getting any closer in agreement on metrics where once again the need for clarity on definitions and terminology was emphasised. One thing that was absolutely clear to all in the room was that, for hybrid measurement systems to be effective, quality panels are still essential, whether for calibration or currency. It would seem clear that data science is not a replacement for panels.
Finally, the discussion turns to the most notable example of progress and the urgent priorities for the next 12 months. Both agreed that there had been significant developments in the use of ad-server data and an increasing reliance on third-party data. This has led to significant progress in the evolution of post-campaign evaluation tools.
For the immediate future it was felt that the industry needs to see some concrete data from the Origin initiative. It will, after all, be six years since it was announced at this conference in Prague in 2019. It would also be welcomed if there were progress made more broadly with cross-media measurement – beyond cross-platform video. Clearly this would be conditional on the value this would represent to advertisers, but clarity on the practicalities involved in the establishment of these priorities would be welcome.
Katherine and Richard discuss their main takeaways:
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