Measurement, morality & malpractice
ITV’s director of advanced advertising, Rhys McLachlan mulls over a Twitter-driven hypothesis in response to platform dereliction of duty
Last month, an industry provocateur, tweeted the below
and elicited the following response from twitter shit-stirrer @YourIdiotClient.
It followed yet another disheartening, but predictable, revelation regarding measurement malpractice from one or other of the larger west-coast ‘are we media or are we platform?’ businesses hoovering up video revenue from advertisers in the market.
The tweet, and following dialogue between various high-profile industry spokespeople remains up today, and I was recently minded to revisit it to mull on the ongoing replies and the development of themes, but mostly to ask myself, what would happen?
The navel gazing introspection took on even greater meaning with Thinkbox’s recent annual release of its ‘donut diagrams’, which this year, as per every year since its inception, shows that despite the widespread normalisation of digital platforms as sources of video viewing, linear television and its associatedBroadcaster video on demand (BVOD) services, account for 63.7% of ‘Average Video Time Per Day’ for individuals.
And, specifically for the marketing community, TV & BVOD account for 91.1% of ‘Video Advertising Viewing’.
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Viewing figures of this stature are continued testimony to television as a brilliant and essential public service, informing and entertaining during a once-in-a-lifetime public health crisis.
They also place a great responsibility on broadcasters to adhere to the highest of standards, to hold themselves accountable for ensuring the behaviours referenced in ASD’s tweet have no place at our table. ‘What would happen?’ it wouldn’t. End of story.
If TV’s been a stalwart these last 13 months as we’ve endured, then you’ll be encouraged by what comes next, as broadcaster offerings become more sophisticated, more agile, more data fuelled, empowered and enabled to offer a compelling suite of progressive advertising products that offer parity, if not superiority, to the video products merchandised by the platforms adroitly called out in the above twitter exchange.
With over 32 million Britons subscribed to ITV Hub alone, we’re delivering permission-based precision at scale, powered by fully privacy-compliant, first-party data sets.
No bots or bad actors here, only true BARB-measured incremental, fully-viewed in Britain’s biggest, most important, and most talked about TV shows, all fully tag-verified for viewability, brand safety, and fraud.
Furthermore, with the hugely successful launch of Planet V, and an industry-wide C-Flight solution coming later this year, this is television in 2021.
Tooled and re-engineered for our collective digital futures, this is television as a platform business, where there is no tolerance of deceit or misdirection.
This is television where there are no nefarious attempts to bend the market to our will, where our democratic institutions are respectfully challenged and held to account rather than undermined.
This is television that delivers verified audiences, where reach is measured by independent bodies using industry approved, and third-party audited, methodologies.
This is television, the most heavily regulated, scrutinised and accountable media channel available for viewers and advertisers.
This is TV.