Today’s media industry is evolving faster than ever, and at Nielsen, we’re working hard to ensure our clients have the tools they need to measure their content and advertising in this quickly changing environment. And innovation is a key part of our strategy.
With that in mind, Nielsen CEO Mitch Barns took the stage at this year’s Advertising Week – New York to make the case that we should think about innovation as being bigger than just the development of new products that drive growth. We need to consider additional types of innovations and understand that efficiency is an equally worthwhile outcome. Megan Clarken, our President of Watch, then followed him on stage to lead a rousing discussion from a panel of experts across the industry on the impact of recent innovations in video measurement and advertising.
“Most innovations have two main outcomes, growth and efficiency,” Mitch explained. “Growth is probably the more well-known (and sought) result…Meanwhile, efficiency innovations are generally less flashy, less sexy, less exciting, but I believe they are often every bit as big and as important as growth innovations.”
Mitch acknowledged that some may question whether Nielsen is even qualified to talk about innovation. But it’s an area we’ve been putting a lot more focus on over the last few years. And the Nielsen Total Audience framework is a recent example of our success. This measurement strategy is actually several different innovations that we’ve developed to work together to measure audiences for ads and content across all screens and platforms in a way that’s comparable.
In addition, we’re also investing in innovations that bring efficiency. VBrand began as a start-up in our innovation incubator in Israel, and we’ve recently acquired 100% of the business. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, VBrand identifies the appearance of brands and logos in a highly automated and efficient manner. Nielsen Sports currently does a very similar task manually by employing an overseas team. Applying VBrand’s technology to our larger Nielsen Sports business will drive big gains in efficiency, speed and ultimately quality.
At the event, Mitch also officially announced that Nielsen has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Visual IQ-a move that will bring additional and valuable efficiencies. Visual IQ specializes in multi-touch attribution modeling of advertising effectiveness on digital platforms, and together we’re building a system that delivers cross-platform metrics for advertising ROI, refreshed on a daily basis.
"效率不是我们应该追求的东西，因为它是一个问题，而是一个机会。这是一个创新和进步的机会，"米奇总结道。
在米奇发言后，福克斯公司广告收入总裁乔-马切斯（Joe Marchese）、阳狮集团首席增长官里沙德-托巴科瓦拉（Rishad Tobaccowala）和联合利华全球媒体、类别与合作副总裁罗布-马斯特（Rob Master）与梅根进行了讨论。他们共同讨论了新设备创造的体验如何为接触大量新受众和挖掘难以想象的广告机会开辟途径。
Calling back to Mitch’s presentation, the group noted that innovation needs to come from unexpected places to find growth and efficiency-and that may mean throwing away established business models.
不过，三人未能就行业在付费模式中应衡量的指标达成一致。乔和里夏德都指出，优质内容需要花钱，他们认为行业需要为优质内容付费，以获得他们想要的结果。Rishad 还认为，将内容、广告和讲故事结合在一起的体验中蕴藏着商机。
但罗布提醒说，我们仍然需要在当今的现实中开展工作："在行业得到净化之前，你可以尽情畅谈未来，但当你遇到围绕数字生态系统的所有这些问题时，你就不可能实现这一目标"。
For more information, you can watch a recording of the full session.
