The Romance lives on: Content and Advertising are more intertwined than ever before

As the video media landscape continues to change, so does the relationship between content and advertising. While at some point we may have thought we were about to witness a divorce between the two, it looks like the romance is back on. What exactly rekindled the flame? 

Content and Advertising measurement: A tumultuous love story 

Before the advent of addressable media, content and advertising were measured “all at once”, if you measured the content, then you also measured the advertising. This was especially true during the era of broadcast and cable TV. 

As time changed, the landscape became less linear and way more fragmented. The way people consume video takes different shapes and forms from linear TV to SVOD or AVOD. These new ways of consuming video content come with their own business models that sometimes differ from the one used by linear TV as they leverage addressable technologies not available to traditional TV until very recently.  

While business models may be different, the needs of advertisers haven’t changed: reaching and engaging with their target audience is still at the forefront of their activity. Yet, how can an organisation engage and reach with their target audience in a highly fragmented, complex and increasingly ‘on-demand’ media landscape? Audiences were measured in a particular way, one combining content with advertising because as an industry we considered that if the viewer was consuming the content, they were also watching the ad within it. 

With more and more models, how do we capture all viewings, all content and all advertising?   

Content and Advertising can not be dissociated 

We have recently been witnessing the expansion of advertising on previously subscription only platforms. AVOD is rapidly taking off making it clear that content and advertising cannot be dissociated. They both need each other, especially in today’s highly segmented media landscape where new platforms with unique business models flourish and product placement grows. As we see the term “cross-media advertising” gaining traction so does “cross-media measurement”, because if it is not measured, how can it be managed?  

At Kantar, we believe that the solution lies in agility. This is why, to us the most effective measurement solution must be able to measure advertising when it is delivered entirely separately from content.  We invested in two watermarking content detection technologies – SNAP and INK, both providing the granularity to track individual advertising of short duration. We also invested in direct integrations with content and advertising delivery platforms from data warehouses and census data from platforms serving video and display content. It’s crucial that we provide measurement that’s able to track advertising delivered independent of content, as well as within it. 

Yet, we also measure content because a future-ready approach to measurement includes advertising measurement but also content measurement as it crucial for media planning.   

Our solutions measure audiences to provide broadcasters with insightful data that could drive their strategic decisions. Each day, with People Meter 7 we measure the “big screen” by processing data from 70,000 people meters across 40,000 homes around the world. Focal Meter enables us to measure which content is consumed on every screen. This solution is the most widely used router meter globally, we are measuring 75,000 screens in 11 countries. 

Future-ready measurement is not about advertising or content, this is about measuring content and advertising separately, as “individuals” but also welcoming them and measuring them as a “couple” through a single unified system. This is not only where true market intelligence takes place, but this is also where impactful value is being unlocked and this is what ultimately could make the rekindled flame last.