What is stopping unified measurement from turning into reality

New Delhi: The Indian Advertising and Marketing industry is undergoing a period of rapid transformation, primarily driven by technological advancements and changing consumer behaviours.

However, an apparently significant challenge hindering effective media planning, buying, and evaluation is the lack of a unified measurement system.

A recent report by GroupM, a leading global media investment company, highlighted the widening gap in measurement across different media channels.

“The lack of a unified measurement system is estimated to cost the industry billions of dollars annually in wasted ad spend,” said the GroupM report.

It emphasised the need for a standardised system that would provide a level playing field for all stakeholders, promoting transparency and trust.

Ashish Tiwari, CMO, Home Credit, said, “There are ethical connotations to the lengths to which this mechanism needs to go for gathering data on consumer behaviour. And certainly, if you want to unify, you are not necessarily going to cross-sell in an acquisition game. You are converting unknown to known. Who knows what the regulatory bodies want at the end of the day? So, consent again becomes a crucial element.”

In a fragmented market like India, there are layered complexities.

“There are two directions of fragmentation in the industry on the broader level. One is horizontal, the other is vertical. i.e. the segmentation in the form of platforms including linear broadcast, and walled-garden streaming apps and the other being in the form of technology – different devices and mechanisms of ad delivery. So, it's like layers within layers,” said Shailley Singh, EVP of Product & COO, IAB Tech Lab.

He said, “The broadcast industry, or what we call linear television programming, has been there since before. And then there is the fast-evolving digital space. On digital, it involves measuring every impression, every view, versus the panel method on broadcast linear programming. So that's like the first section of fragmentation – you have these two different methodologies. And reconciling these two is pretty hard.”

The industry relies on a patchwork of mechanisms for checks and balances

Attribution is in fact, one of the major challenges in bringing a mechanism such as that of unified metrics – with varying windows and credit allocation methods, across various platforms.

“This path is being explored. Outcome-based measurement is being considered as an alternative to traditional attribution models,” Singh informed.

A senior executive at a leading FMCG brand said, “The worry is mostly for advertisers because no one knows whether one is putting the right amount of money in the right place or not. As long as these digital platforms and publishers are not interested, advertisers alone can't fund a mechanism like that of unified measurement metrics. If you look at TV measurement, most of the funding has been done by broadcasters because it was in their interest to get the right data. Collectively, advertisers can say - My job is to sell my products. Whether measurement happens or if it is not 100% accurate, who cares? It is good to have information, probably will be an eye-opener for many. However, you can't stop advertising just because somebody is not measuring it.”

The proliferation of the digital space

While metrics like CTR, CPC and many other such terms emerged, the rise of social media, mobile advertising, and programmatic buying has exponentially increased complexity.

Issues like ad fraud and the dominance of platforms like Google and Meta further hinder the development of a unified system.

“There is a lot of back and forth on digital measurement, whether OTT or other marketing methods, it aligns with the discussion around attention planning. Clicks, scrolls, and other ways to engage with content raise a question on determining measurement concerns like whether the attention of the viewer is on that page or that video and so on,” opined an industry expert off-the-record.

In the present scenario, there is no industry consensus to holistically implement such a mechanism across the digital platform.

“For the big tech giants, it is not a worry to come out with something like unified measurement metrics. These are the same people who are part of organisations that are also trying to regulate or bring out guidelines for the industry. So right now, they are involved in simply fuelling the growth of the digital ecosystem,” said one of the experts quoted before.

Alekhya Chakrabarty, Vice President of Marketing and Growth at Unstop, listed down the hindrances in the way of unified measurement.

“Firstly, the entire funnel is yet unresolved in the non-e-commerce channel ecosystem. So, whichever industry has even a significant part of its sales coming from non-e-commerce channels, will find it difficult to have a 100% attribution and 100% measurement in place,” he said.

"The other aspect is tons of data lying around, and there is still a lot of aggregation yet to happen at a very fundamental level (across companies and segments because they have their own CRM tools.

Digital mediums and channels have their own data with which they track the efficiency of media metrics, but the attribution to the overall funnel is often missing. Third, there are channel metrics corresponding to the channels where they put the products in. Such a disparity where you don’t have a common denominator ends up ensuring that every company's operating ecosystem ends up implementing its own unified measurement metrics mechanism.”

Industry's tryst with unified measurement

Several industry bodies and trade associations have recognised the need for a unified measurement system and have initiated efforts to develop common standards. The Media Rating Council (MRC) and Comscore, a global media measurement and analytics company, with its Unified Digital Measurement (UDM) initiative, aim to provide a comprehensive view of audience behaviour across devices and platforms. Meanwhile, global benchmarks like ISO 20481 offer a framework for cross-media measurement, providing a foundation for the development of standardised metrics.

The adoption of these standards has been slow in India. However, comScore is expected to kick off its CTV measurement in India in a few days.

Global initiatives such as the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) have also been actively working on developing unified measurement frameworks. These organisations are focused on creating standardised metrics and methodologies that can be applied across different media channels.

While BARC India came up with the idea of Ekam as a tool towards unifying audience measurement across platforms, its journey has been fraught with challenges and controversies.

The industry has expressed concerns over the accuracy and representativeness of the data provided by Ekam, questioning its ability to truly capture the nuances of digital consumption.

“The industry has largely achieved standardisation on impression measurement metrics for both linear and digital advertising. Standard definitions for impressions, clicks, and viewable impressions exist and are widely adopted. Mechanisms for collecting data may differ across platforms (iOS, Android, Samsung TV, etc.), but the data is translated into standard metrics. Open Measurement SDK (OM SDK) from IAB Tech Lab has been instrumental in bringing consistency at scale for impression measurement and verification. To this, certification processes and audits ensure adherence to these standards,” Singh explained.

“I don't see an immediate solution to that. not because of technology but more because of commercial reasons like, you know walled Gardens – they have their own system being leveraged to other advertisers and publishers,” Singh added.

Shivendra Misra, Director APAC, IAB Tech Lab, said, “Social media as a technology came after the whole ad network system was already established. Hence, they adapted to the system over time. But connected TV was sort of the only child stuck in between – trying to figure out whether it was on the internet side or from the TV side.”

However, at this point, from an overall perspective across all fragments of the market, he believes that “no innovation is overpowering enough and the innovation that will overpower might be backed by some bias driven by the crucial need of buyers.”

The role of regulatory bodies contributing to faster adoption or formulation of unified measurement metrics appears to be insignificant as of yet mostly because the industry has been relying on self-regulation thus far.