Cross-media measurement: boosting confidence and driving growth

“Today, with the media scene becoming more fragmented than ever before, brands need to acquire a holistic view of their users’ journey across millions of touchpoints,” says Pierre Choueiri, the chairman and chief executive of the Choueiri Group. “This will enable them to spend the right amount on the right vehicle, drive better targeting and ultimately achieve higher ROI.”

Choueiri is discussing the Advertising Business Group’s (ABG) UAE Audience Measurement Project, which aims to provide the country’s advertising and media industry with a robust mechanism of cross-media measurement. It’s a complex and ambitious project, but one that is being audited from the word go and has the potential to not only play a pivotal role in boosting advertiser confidence, but in driving industry growth too.

“In a nutshell, they must adopt a data-powered, holistic, advertiser-centric approach to planning, activating and measuring,” adds Choueiri. “A cross-media measurement framework would be the ultimate answer to fulfilling these requirements. One key element here, or across any other initiative of this kind, would be to ensure that users’ privacy is respected at all times.”

The ABG’s UAE Audience Measurement Project may be in the early stages of development, but it has a level of cross-party support that is unprecedented. Facebook, Google, Unilever, Ferrrero, the Choueiri Group, OMG, Dentsu Aegis Network, MCN and GroupM are all on the ABG’s steering committee, while backing from the wider industry has been comprehensive since the initiative was first announced.

It’s a remarkable achievement, especially given the industry’s history of disagreement and the opacity of the market. “It is known to everyone that in our region media measurement is not our industry strong point,” says Anna Germanos, head of FMCG, luxury, retail and e-commerce (MENA) at Facebook. “We struggle to get access to quality media measurement data and this means there are considerable amounts of impressions bought which are driving diminishing or even negative value to advertisers. I believe by combining efforts we will help elevate the quality of measurement, bring more transparency into the advertising ecosystem and help all players make decisions based on data, reduce wastage, and in turn improve ROI.”

Traditionally, TV, digital, print and radio audiences have been measured separately, creating silos of data that fail to provide any kind of multi-platform perspective on consumer journeys. The ABG wants to change that.

“Measurement has evolved a lot in the past year and now, especially in a time of crisis, everybody wants to measure efficiency properly,” says Pierric Duthoit, industry director at Google. “It’s no longer like it used to be a few years ago, where it was a cherry on the top because people were happy with some form of measurement.

“What has changed in the past year is this real discussion and dialogue between the brands, the platforms and the channels. Because everybody understands that we are part of an ecosystem and the customer journey is one journey. The word ecosystem is key here. Everybody’s tired of having different measures or values. By working together we can come to an agreement of what exactly we are measuring.”

On a global level, an answer to the question of what to measure and how to do so is already being formulated by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which has been working on finding cross-industry consensus on key global principles for cross- media measurement since last year. In turn, the ABG hopes to align its UAE Audience Measurement Project with the WFA’s principles. In doing so, it hopes to help answer questions such as who is watching what, where and how, and what amount of audience duplication exists across certain platforms.

“There’s an element around the consumer that in many instances has been absent from [previous] discussions [about media measurement], and I think cross-media addresses this,” says Ibrahim Kadiri, head of market insights for EMEA emerging markets at Google. “Consumers don’t think about media in silos. They think about media in terms of content and the devices they use are just the delivery platforms. So we can’t think about media from a publisher or from a platform owner’s perspective. If we really want to be consumer centric from an advertising perspective, we really have think about and put the customer first.”

Hence the desire to drive the UAE Audience Measurement Project forward throughout the rest of this year.

“The vision for this initiative in the short term is to come to a clear road map of how we can make this a reality,” says Kadiri. “And then in the mid to long-term, to bring that vision of cross-media measurement to life in a way that respects the user’s privacy, that is encompassing of different media from a consumer perspective, and gives advertisers and brands a clear picture of audiences and where to find those audiences effectively.”

What is clear is that the lack of effective media measurement has contributed to low levels of advertising spend per capita compared with the rest of the world. The MENA region spends three to four times less per person than the average APAC market, says Kadiri, and seven to 10 times less than the average Western European or North American market. The Dubai Future Council on Media believes the figures are even worse. Last year it said annual advertising spend does not exceed $6.17 for every man, woman and child across the MENA region, compared with $680 in the US and $270 in Western Europe. The scope for growth, therefore, is sizeable.

“We know the money exists in the market, and the value exists in terms of the value of advertising, so the biggest barrier to a lot of advertisers spending more has always been transparent and accurate measurement,” says Kadiri. “For advertisers, that barrier was ‘do I know where my money’s going? Can I effectively track the value of that money?’ So our hope is that cross-media measurement that is transparent, that is user centric, that is audited and has everyone is onboard will bring additional investment to the region.”

This hope goes way beyond the immediate repercussions of Covid-19 and the scrutiny of current budgets. It’s about building a future that is defined by growth, transparency and confidence, rather than decline, disagreement and doubt. As Germanos says, it’s about providing “a fair, independent and continued analysis of cross-media measurement that all players in the UAE can tap into at any point in time”. In doing so, the initiative will “enable like-for-like comparisons between media platforms and inform media allocation”.

“As cross-media measurement is adopted across the region, the role of data within the entire industry ecosystem will grow to become absolutely vital,” says Choueiri. “With greater measurement and transparency, every media vehicle will be able to attract its fair share of advertising revenues and brands will feel a greater sense of confidence about their advertising investments. This in turn will boost spending and facilitate the growth of the overall MENA ad market.”