Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to another episode of Screen Wars, our thought leader series where we learn from industry experts about the latest trends and challenges from across the convergent TV space. 0:16 Hosted by Michael Beach. Uh, today I'm joined by Jon Watts. Jon is currently the managing director at the Coalition for Inno- Innovative Media Measurement, or SIM as it's known in the industry. 0:27 Uh, Jon's a really fascinating guy. Uh, before SIM he was a, he was a consultant in the UK. Uh, we talked about one of his projects, which was around the media rights, uh, for the English Premier League. 0:36 Uh, we dug into that and kind of where sports media rights is going, which I thought was, you know, really interesting. Uh, overall, you know, SIM is doing fascinating work. 0:45 Uh, you know, they're, they hold these month- monthly member meetings, they've got over 70 member, member companies. Uh, and these gatherings are probably the highest ROI for my time in terms of learning. 0:55 Um, I really advise anybody looking at, uh, joining a group around media measurement to, to give a look to SIM. 1:02 Uh, you know, as far as the podcast goes, we cover a couple other topics, you know, the, you know, TV measurement and the, and the upfronts, a kind of a reality check on where we are. 1:10 Another interesting one, which we've had a couple with, you know, with Mike Shields and with, uh, Brian, Brian Weiser, um, you know, is YouTube TV and, and how are people looking at that? 1:19 And the measurement space is actually an interesting one there because some people that, you know, say it's the type of content that de- defines whether it's, you know, TV or high premium video or not, and other people are wanting to measure attention. 1:32 You know, we've had, you know, uh, Karen Nelson-Field on before from Amplified Intelligence and that's something that, you know, they're working on. And, uh, you know, there's a tremendous opportunity, 1:41 uh, as we start to look at the whole video space, and I think YouTube is just a, a really interesting, um, interesting case and kind of teaches about everything else. So, uh, please enjoy my conversation with Jon Watts. 1:54 Hey, Jon, welcome to Screen Wars. Thank you so much, Michael. Great to be here. Uh, you know, will you mind giving us kind of a little, little background on, uh, SIM and kind of the, the problem you solve? Sure. 2:05 So SIM is actually not a new organization. 2:08 SIM's been around since the 2000s when it was founded by the major TV networks were the main drivers, and their, their main goal for the organization was to promote innovation in measurement, and particularly they were keen to have an organization that could focus efforts to explore the use of set-top box and ACR data to support more granular measurement, particularly of streaming services, which even then were obviously growing and becoming an important part of the market. 2:35 Um, I took over at SIM last year after my predecessor, Jane Clark, retired, and I think Jane, you know, at the summit, when she looked back at her incredible career, was able to really point with pride at the huge contribution that SIM had made to supporting the development of a whole new paradigm for measurement. 2:53 Um, we reset SIM's mission last year, and we now describe our mission very straightforwardly as being to promote and cultivate innovations, best practices, and improvements in measurement, metrics, and data across the TV and adverti- and broad- the media and advertising ecosystem. 3:11 So it's a broad mission. We tend to think about it very much in terms of those three pillars, measurement and currency development, um, new metrics like attention, and then data enablement and collaboration. 3:21 And it covers all of those good issues like, um, identity resolution, addressable advertising and targeting, data quality, so a pretty broad smorgasbord of things that our peers in the industry, our members are really focused on. 3:36 Yeah, I noticed, I mean, you've grown to, I think, more than 70 member companies, um, at least, uh, just, it's what, what's on your site. Uh, what makes a, a great fit for a company in, in SIM? 3:48 It, it, it's a great question. So w- when I started at the organization, our members tended to skew, um, larger. So we were doing very well with the big networks and agency groups. 3:59 But my feeling very strongly was that we needed to broaden and deepen our membership. So the world of TV has obviously got much wider during the course of the last few years. Um, barriers to entry have come down. 4:11 The smart TV players are critical entrants and participants. We have a growth of programmatic trading platforms. 4:18 Data has enabled a real flourishing of innovation in the measurement space, as you guys at CrossScreen know very well. 4:24 And we really want to broaden out the membership base on the, on the grounds that exposing new perspectives, insights, and experiences to our coalition would really help to drive more productive, positive conversations. 4:37 So we really try to position ourselves as a generally nonpartisan pan-industry group. 4:43 We want as many organizations as possible to come and be part of SIM, be they large or small, on the grounds that they have interesting, valuable things to contribute. 4:52 We're also about to launch an international membership tier, so increasingly we're finding that, um, companies around the world are interested in what's happening in the US, where we're really seeing this unique transition to a multi-currency mar- marketplace, um, and some very particular market developments. 5:08 It was always my experience, um, and if I'm a thinly disguised Brit, as you can probably tell, it was always my experience in the past that the Europeans were quite interested in what was happening in the US, and the U- the Americans were somewhat, but not very interested in what was happening in Europe with the JICs. 5:22 Um, but increasingly we're finding there's much greater interest. We're seeing innovations both here and overseas, which I think all parties want to understand. 5:31 So we're building out those international relationships really aggressively, um, at the moment. We see it as a, a great opportunity to build bridges and learn from what's happening in other markets. Yeah. 5:41 Obviously, I know you had a, you know, you know, really strong history in, in the kind of the strategy side. What, you know, I guess, what was your path to getting to SIM? 5:50 And then the kind of second part of the question, um, what are the challenges of, of going international? Like what... 5:57 You know, obviously you've got, you know, as much fragmentation we have in the US, you probably have that on, on steroids outside the US. Um, so kind of, uh, combine those two together. Yeah. 6:08 So I spent most of my career working, um, for various international consulting firms in the UK, um, always focused on media and advertising. 6:17 I started my career in the 1990s, obviously around the time of the internet explosion. 6:22 Um, for a long time I was the internet and digital media guy, and then started increasingly to work in and around the TV and video space and with the big internet platform businesses at the kind of convergence of those two. 6:34 So we were spending a lot of time helping big TV companies understand Google, YouTube, Facebook, and so on and so forth, and vice versa. 6:43 Um, in the mid 20- in the mid 20-teens, um, I started to work with various partners, pulling together coalitions of the willing, um, like-minded companies to do pieces of work that were really designed to try and move the marketplace forwards. 6:58 We did some really interesting projects looking at the use and application of TV data across the ecosystem. 7:04 We did some work looking at the evolution of TV measurement in 2015, 2016, um, which was particularly interesting, um, looking at different European markets and how they were adapting and evolving their measurement offerings. 7:17 And it was those coalitions which led me to SIM. Um, I met Jane, my predecessor, um, towards the end of the last decade, and we hit off a friendship and spent a lot of time collaborating. 7:28 Jane was involved in some of our European work, and some of our European partners and companies began to get involved, um, in the US marketplace. 7:36 It's also worth saying that the UK marketplace was becoming increasingly American. We had Comcast acquiring Sky, Viacom Paramount buying into Channel five. 7:45 Google and Facebook are the biggest media owners from an advertising point of view now in the UK market. 7:50 So more and more of our work was international multi-territory, which has-- which led me here to the US, um, resulting in my move over here in 2019. 8:00 Well, as our, uh, you know, title Cross Screen Media, I'm interested in anyone kind of moving from digital to TV 'cause that was kind of our similar path. Did you feel like, 8:09 uh, you had a different perspective or you, um, like what was your thinking when you made that transition? Do you know, it, it-- I've always been interested by the new things. 8:21 Um, you know, the old things, uh, have a lot to add and I think are hugely valuable. Nobody wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to say. 8:29 Um, but the, the-- we happen to live in a marketplace which is changing very, very quickly. 8:35 It's an unprecedented period of change, I think, and trying to help companies understand the direction of travel and the opportunities and challenges presented, and how best to mitigate and address those, was something that always, um, appealed to me. 8:48 Um, I found that we, we, we look back at, um, you know, 2010 or the year 2000, and I think we hugely overstated in general the impact of new media on old media. 9:01 Obviously, we've had media like print or, um, you know, recorded music, which have been hugely disrupted. 9:07 But I remember seeing forecasts in the year 2000 which forecast for linear television would be dead by 2010, and over fifty percent of consumption would be on demand. 9:17 And all of these things, I think, hugely overstated the level of disruption in the TV space. Now we have clearly seen huge amounts of disruption, and particularly I think it's been positive. 9:28 We've lowered the barriers to entry to bringing new video services into the marketplace. Um, we've cr- we've-- that's led to an explosion of choice for audiences and advertisers. 9:39 There's now vastly more content available in your typical household. 9:42 But at the same time, I think TV organizations around the world in general have done a very good job at capitalizing on these changes to better serve their customers. 9:51 So if you look at things like streaming services and the content libraries they offer with more opportunities to watch when you want, what you want, to catch up on content, to binge, the quality TV, um, the signal itself has improved dramatically. 10:06 I, I'm old enough to remember the days of SD, and when you compare and contrast with a 4K or 8K signal now, it doesn't bear comparison. 10:13 TV's just become even greater than it was, and I think that's a testament to the medium's ability to adapt to the new. Um, it's got better. It's got better. Yeah. On all fronts. 10:26 The content I think is incredible today, and I think, you know, we think a lot about the, the business model of TV and, and kind of video in general and what, um, our kind of-- our big picture view is that the-- 10:38 to fund this ecosystem, as you know, um, you know, fragmentation really causes or, or no company's gonna have a massive, um, subscriber base like they did in, you know, 2010, like the pay TV industry in the US. 10:51 But the, uh, you know, advertising rates are gonna have to go up 'cause you've got, you know, lower ad loads and things like that coming from streaming. 10:58 But in order to do that, you've gotta improve the, the value proposition to the buyer to be willing to pay more. Uh, that's where I think just the, the measurement space is, is key to that. 11:07 If, you know, we, we can't succeed there, then, um, you know, it's gonna be tough for the market to, to keep growing at the rate it's been in the last, you know, ten or twenty years. Yeah. I, I, I think you're right. 11:18 I mean, y- you know, any economist would generally say that when you increase the level of competition in the marketplace, you increase the number of industry participants competing for consumer spending, for eyeballs, for ad revenues. 11:31 In general, we'll see market share go down. Um, the incumbents will see, um, their fortunes decline to some extent, um, in terms of share at least. Competition drives fragmentation in many marketplaces. 11:45 Um, I think there are clearly transitional challenges. 11:49 Um, it's worth saying, I think, and this is something I learned, you know, very much from my consulting career, that, um, the experience of different markets which have fundamentally different structures, economies, cultural tastes and preferences do vary very widely. 12:03 I remember I was working for Sky as a consultant when Sky began its European expansion, and in the UK, Sky's success had been fundamentally driven by the incredible appeal of the English Premier League, which Murdoch famously described as the battering ram for pay-TV services. 12:21 He acquired the rights, rolled out satellite dishes, and did an amazing job of building out the pay-TV industry in the UK market. In Germany, the Bundesliga just doesn't function in that way. 12:31 And I think Sky, to some extent, was caught a little bit by surprise when it acquired Bundesliga rights, but didn't see the same steady trajectory of growth in its subscriber numbers. 12:42 I think if you look at different markets, their structure and dynamics vary very widely. So here in the US, you have an unusual marketplace. Um, pay TV has been historically expensive. 12:53 It's been characterized because of the dynamics of the cable industry by, some people would argue, lower levels of competition, at least until the rollout of satellite and then IPTV services. Prices have been higher. 13:06 Um, ad loads on network television are higher, which I think has supported a kind of flight to ad-free environments. 13:13 Some people I speak to say the quality of the experience as a consumer, the advertising experience, is also lagging behind what it is in some other markets. 13:21 And I think all of those things together have helped drive a thirst for alternatives in some marketplaces. Pay TV in much of Europe isn't suffering quite the same challenges. 13:31 I tend to think p- pay TV isn't dying, it's just being transformed and having babies. 13:36 Um, when we look at the rollout of virtual MVPD services, they're growing pretty rapidly, and they offer a really compelling alternative, I think, for many consumers, and a better way of consuming those types of channels and offerings. 13:49 So I think pay TV is a huge industry. It's clearly gonna transform. 13:53 Any transformation, when you're changing the engines of a plane mid-flight, um, while in a dog fight, um, is probably gonna lead to some disruption, but I'm, I'm positive and confident about the future of the industry. 14:04 And as you say, all of that has implications to measurement. Um, I think we're now in a place in the US marketplace which is hugely encouraging, but it's also very novel. 14:14 Um, most marketplaces in Europe, for example, where we have JICs or MOCs, have tried very hard to maintain a single currency. 14:23 Now, I think in practice, it's probably fair to say that the extent to which those single currencies have been dominant has been somewhat overstated. 14:33 So many media owners in the UK, for example, will say that they actually trade on five or six different currencies. But the main JIC-led currencies like BARB undoubtedly remain the kind of main trading mechanism. 14:45 I think here in the US, we're trying a grand experiment. We're trying something very new and different, and I think that deserves to be encouraged and supported. But it's, it's a moment of transition. 14:54 Um, the JIC is just up and running. We don't yet have access to standardized data from the JIC, which will clearly change the way many of the U- the US' measurement services operate. 15:05 Um, the calibration panel that the VAB and ANA are rolling out has still yet to launch, and again, we'd expect these kinds of common assets, shared assets in the measurement space to lead to quite significant changes. 15:17 So it's a transitional period, I think, but I'm positive. 15:21 I think it's probably fair to say that competition, if it functions effectively between measurement providers, will lead to cheaper prices and better products, and more optionality for both the networks and for advertisers in terms of what they use and how it suits and meets their needs. 15:38 So I'm positive. 15:42 You know, that's interesting and, and I know we're, I think, a week or two p- uh, past the upfront presentations, and obviously the, uh, you know, alternative currencies and all these things are in the news. 15:53 You know, what's the... Kind of give us a reality check on, on where we're at there. Um, obviously you said, you know, in the international market we're going through this grand experiment. 16:02 You know, kind of where are we today? I think, like I said, we're, we're in a transitional period. 16:08 So I think the big agency groups are still sleeves rolled up, knee-deep in, in working through the mechanics and logistics of transitioning to a multicurrency planning and buying environment, and that work will take some time. 16:24 Um, we have had interesting presentations from a number of agency groups at our regular SIM meetings, and they are both positive about the impact of these changes, but also realistic that there is work to be done to fully unlock the potential of the multicurrency marketplace. 16:40 I think the big TV networks are all in. That's very clear. Um, I think the JIC is a hugely positive step. Um, collaboration fundamentally helps measurement. 16:50 Measurement is a team sport, and the JIC as the new collaborative structure, I think can have a really important role in supporting the development of marketplace, but it's still relatively early stages. 17:01 Um, we have companies that are still ingesting new datasets that change their offerings. As I said, we have streaming data from the JIC. We have calibration panel offerings still gaining hold. 17:11 Um, Nielsen is still gearing up to launch Nielsen ONE, which won't come on stream until the 2024 upfronts now is the current target. 17:18 So there's a lot still to happen, I think, before we even get past the beginning of the beginning, if you see what I mean. That said, I think we can already see positive changes. 17:28 You know, I think some of the newer entrants are innovating at a furious rate. I think companies like VideoAmp and iSpot and others who are playing in the currency game are really driving forward the market. 17:42 They're doing interesting things that help the market move forwards. And we're also very positive about what Nielsen is doing with Nielsen ONE. 17:49 Um, it's gonna be a huge step forward for marketplace, and will bring some really compelling new capabilities into the market, especially what they're doing with streaming data, which, um, it's painful and complex and challenging, but it will mark a big improvement over the historic, um, panel-based system that's gone before. 18:09 Yeah. I wanna go back to something, um, kind of slightly off topic you said before, but it was interesting, the, the sports rights, uh, with soccer. Mm. 18:17 And I know we're, in the US, we're seeing the rise of, uh, Formula 1. 18:20 Obviously we've seen the Premier League, um, have an impact, and then we're always anticipating that, you know, the NBA will go out and be international. Um, 18:31 it's interesting you said that Germany, you didn't see the same kind of gain from a sports rights deal, uh, for Sky that they saw in, in England. 18:40 Um, I think probably the biggest thing has been what happened with the, uh, pr- Indian Premier League, uh, cricket with Disney and, and Paramount. Mm-hmm. 18:49 Um, how do-- I mean, how would you look at that if you were these networks as, as sports really go global, uh, but they're still doing kinda country by country deals? Uh, so I'm fascinated by sports. 19:01 I, I've worked with pay TV companies, um, for many years, um, and with big sports rights holders, um, during the, the last decade, and the sports marketplace is fascinating. 19:12 Um, sports in the US accounts for an extraordinarily large proportion of total live linear viewing. 19:19 Um, but I think if there's one big lesson that we've learnt from the past, you know, two decades, it's that no sport has a given right to remain top of the pile. Um, as tastes change, sports has to change. 19:33 A great example, I think, is cricket in the UK. Cricket is a, is obviously a very seasonal sport. Um, it's played in the summer but not in the winter. Um, and historically in the UK it was a very long game. 19:44 Um, and that really, as entertainment options proliferated, it, it had an impact on demand. 19:50 And I think the English Cricket Board and other authorities, the clubs and so on, did a really fabulous job of innovating in the format by rolling out shorter, more action-oriented formats which perhaps fit better with current entertainment preferences. 20:06 Sports also has some pretty interesting in- and inherent limitations. 20:10 So if you work with, say, the English Premier League, trying to find kick-off times, as it's mostly watched live, that work for multiple time zones around the world is complicated. 20:21 Um, there's been lots of talk obviously about playing Premier League matches here in the States and about the various US sports federations having games played in the UK market, um, and other territories. 20:32 And that, that I think we'll see grow, but there's limits to that, um, which I think will always mean that sports remain very heavily nationally orientation and outlook. 20:44 We always used to laugh in the UK at the, um, the, the baseball World Cup series or the World Series, um, and people would say, "Where's the rest of the world? They don't seem to be taking part." 20:54 There's a few countries, but the UK doesn't field a baseball team. 20:58 I guess soccer remains, you know, the, the great champion from that point of view, from a kinda global point of view, but you look at the numbers behind cricket at the moment, and it's one of the most valuable sports in the world. 21:08 Um, I do think the US federations, um, uh, have some big international opportunities open to them. Obviously, they've been looking at those for some time. 21:18 But I think as the US marketplace becomes more complex and challenging in many respects, overseas may well start to offer increasingly attractive opportunities, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the leagues and federations trying to address those opportunities in a more robust and concrete way during the, the rest of this decade. 21:37 You know, ju- sports is really interesting 'cause if you look at the, the revenue projections for the media rights, they've got it, you know, growing well into the future, which I think has driven the franchise values. 21:46 And you-- I mean, you're seeing that in soccer. I mean, you're seeing that in, like even, I think, the Ottawa Senators- Mm-hmm... in the NHL I think are gonna go for over a billion dollars. I mean, it's quite incredible. 21:56 Um, and I kinda come back to that economics problem of, of how are they gonna continue to, to pay for this? Um, obviously, you know, a combination of s- of subscriptions and advertising and sponsorships and, uh... 22:07 But I'm really fascinated by sports that go global and are able to add revenue from just opening up new markets. Um, so that's, yeah, that's really interesting. I, I agree. I mean, 22:18 I, I, I think the, the value of sports i- is fundamentally driven in most markets by two factors. So one is obviously the inherent underlying appeal of the sport itself. 22:29 Um, but second is the level of competition for the rights. So how many well-funded players who believe they can make a return from their investment are competing for those sports rights? 22:40 So if you take the UK as an example, the, the biggest growth in the value of sports rights, particularly the rights of the UK Premier League, came at a time when Sky and British Telecom, BT, were competing head to head in the pay TV market. 22:54 And it was the, some clever packaging by the Premier League, plus the ever-escalating levels of competition between those two players that really drove the huge growth in sports rights, um, during the twenty tens. 23:06 When BT exited from the market, um, the Premier League had a problem, and the last settlement was actually, the last, um, bidding round was actually flat. 23:17 They agreed with most of the major bidders just a flat settlement with no inflation. Obviously, COVID and the pandemic had a role. 23:24 The, the challenge is that in the UK market at least, it's quite difficult to envisage other well-funded, um, you know, bidders coming in to bid for the biggest and most attractive packages of rights and being able to afford it, unless they do so for reasons which are fundamentally non-economic. 23:42 You know, like to, you know, buy market share or boost profile and they're, you know, the kind of Apple model where you're cross-subsidizing. 23:49 Um, for years, interestingly, the Premier League would, um, every time there was a rights round, it would leak stories into the press, um, allegedly, suggesting that this was definitely going to be the year when Apple would come in and start bidding high for sports rights, just to drive up the kind of prices in the auction. 24:07 Um, and it hasn't happened, I think because when you start trying to unpack how would an Apple bid for sports rights really work, it's quite hard to see how it'd work in practice. 24:17 Are you gonna withhold games from everybody who doesn't own an Apple device? How new does my Apple device have to be? Y- All sorts of questions like that. It, it's complicated. 24:27 I think here in the US you have a really unique marketplace because you have an enormous contiguous media market, obviously with lots of regional, um, segments, with a lot of very well-funded players, all of whom have over time invested in sports rights, and you have these really interesting new bidders who've come in and are, you know, gearing up their investment. 24:50 Plus, you have the growth of fighting sports. Um, you look at the recent mega merger- Um, in the fighting sports space. But that's an enormous enterprise by international standards. 25:00 You know, it's four or five times the value of Manchester United, possibly the most famous UK soccer club. 25:07 So it's a very big and well-funded marketplace with some unique dynamics, which I think should see it remain healthy for a considerable time. 25:16 But the question I'm really interested in is, can the existing major sports franchises and federations transform in order to grow their international appeal and to bring in younger audiences, which I think remains challenging. 25:29 And secondly, will we see new challenger sports, you know, coming in and starting to capture significant time and attention? 25:36 I had a bizarre conversation, a fascinating conversation with someone recently about pickleball, of all things. 25:42 I think there are efforts to drive the commercialization of pickleball, which inherently feels slightly bizarre, but hey, there are people who wanna watch it. It's an entertaining sport. 25:51 It's starting from a very, um, low level, so there's lots of growth opportunity out there, it seems to me. 25:57 So yeah, it's, it's a really interesting and dynamic space, like, like the rest of the entertainment marketplace at this point in time. If you-- I think if you're a viewer, this is the golden period. 26:06 There's never been more creativity and innovation and opportunity for creators to bring services to market and for things that are good, for those things to scale very quickly. 26:16 I'm sure like me, you've had lots of conversations in which MrBeast has been mentioned. 26:21 Um, he's coming up on a pretty regular basis of late as a, as a YouTube-born creator who's now funding content to the tune that a big network might find palatable. 26:33 The barrier between professional content and content created on the online networks, which is clearly professional in many cases, has clearly come down. 26:40 We've seen a huge democratization of production capabilities across the marketplace with HD camera recording equipment and studio setups and green screens, and obviously we wouldn't be having a podcast if we didn't mention AI at some point. 26:57 AI is gonna drive more transformation and change. I know this is something you've been writing about in your wonderful mailer. Um, but we're gonna see a lot more change, and it's gonna be exciting. 27:06 I think we're democratizing video creativity in a way that was very hard to foresee twenty-five years ago. 27:13 Yeah, MrBeast is interesting 'cause, uh, the question I always ask people is, you know, do you consider YouTube to be TV advertising? So I think that's kind of the question. 27:21 Uh, and, you know, or premium video or, or kind of whatever the definition is and, and 27:26 it kind of brings up a d- a disconnect between buyer and seller, 'cause there are people that are-- You know, I was on a panel, um, you know, a couple weeks ago and, and half the people were like, "Absolutely," and then half the people were like, "No way." 27:35 There was really no middle, middle ground of, you know, maybe it does. 27:39 Where, where do you see disconnects between buyers and sellers kind of in the overall market today, especially on the, the kind of premium video TV space? It's such an interesting topic. 27:48 Um, uh, we're running, um, a summit in Cannes, and our opening panel will involve executives from NBCU, um, YouTube, Google, um, Omnicom, and, um, Karen Nelsonfield from Applied Intelligence, um, who will be talking about the quality debate. 28:09 And the debate has been running for, I guess, intensely for sort of six to nine months, a bit longer now. And I think like you, I don't see much sign of a consensus breaking out anytime soon. 28:21 Um, I hear at least three discrete perspectives. 28:24 Um, so on the one hand, a set of organizations who want to clearly set out that made for TV content, which is compliant with various rules and regulations, is delivered professionally by teams, 28:39 um, goes through some sort of editorial compliance process, offers a brand safe environment. 28:44 All of these sorts of factors is different from the kind of long tail of UGC, um, is one position I hear fairly regularly, and there's clearly some truth in that. 28:53 There's a second perspective, which I think you could argue is the democratization perspective, which says, clearly there's lots of material on long tail video platforms, which is not like TV content. 29:05 It's user-generated, low production standards, all the obvious things. 29:09 But there's clearly a body of content which absolutely is very TV-like, and it's increasingly being watched and finding its way onto TV screens via smart TVs and other devices across around the world. 29:21 And that content, many audiences would argue, is basically TV. 29:26 And then there's a third viewpoint, which says, "You go and have your debate, that's absolutely fine by me, but I'm the buyer, and I don't like sellers telling me the inherent quality and importance of their product for me. 29:38 I'll make a decision based on the effectiveness of the advertising I run on your platforms." Um, we're very skeptical about seller-defined attempts to define quality in some robust, sustainable way. 29:51 I think it's a debate which is gonna run and run for a while, um, and it, it ties directly into our measurement mantra, our measurement focus. 30:00 There's one set of people who are keen to see us define quality first and then measure reach, 30:07 and there are a second set of viewpoints who say that we should measure reach and then look to define quality and apply, you know, dividers and discounts essentially. Some reach is not worth as much as other reach. 30:20 Not all impressions are created equal. And I think that debate has some way to run yet. I'm not sure we're gonna see a definitive answer breakout. 30:28 I think the marketplace is big enough for different approaches and perspectives. And I was particularly struck by, um, a conversation I had recently with a major agency executive who said, 30:38 "The advertising market is very wide. There are a very large number of different brands out there. 30:44 From mass market brands, you know, in the FMCG category to challenger brands targeting a very particular niche, perhaps edgier audience." 30:53 And it seems unlikely that all of those advertisers with their very different campaign objectives, their different target audiences, their different brands and positions in the market, are going to arrive at a single... 31:04 common shared definition of what quality or premium means. They'll find value in different places and in different ways, and they'll be prepared to pay differently for it. 31:13 And I think that seems a reasonable perspective to me. For some people, that debate about quality matters enormously. They want to see their ads running in the Super Bowl. 31:21 They wanna see their ads on, you know, the ad, the ad-funded max service in between succession, whatever it might happen to be. 31:27 There are others who have a different view, and the market's big enough for both sets of perspectives, it seems to me. Yeah, I agree with that. 31:33 I always felt like that was kind of how the, the digital ad space was where, you know, people were, you know what I mean? 31:40 Diff- completely different KPIs, different, you know, we were really early into audience targeting, and so we were willing to drastically overpay for an impression that we, you know, felt confident was hitting an audience versus somebody who wasn't. 31:51 And, um, I always said the buyer would have their own value of inventory, um, and they may value it in a completely different way, uh, than anybody else. 32:01 So let me get you out, out of here on, uh, kind of a final question. You know, if you could change, wave a magic wand and change one thing about the video measurement space, what would it be? 32:12 Oh, that's such an interesting question. Um, I think the one thing I would try to do is I would, I would try to move us away from the perception of certainty in the measurement marketplace. 32:26 I think when you really get under the hood of different measurement offerings, all measurement involves estimates and assumptions and modeling. 32:38 There is no part of measurement space in which we have fully deterministic census-level, 100% accurate data. 32:46 And the more we get to grips with the fact that measurement inherently involves modeling and assumptions and estimates and edit rules to correct for flaws in the data and to account for biases, the better off we're gonna be. 33:00 Um, there's been a discussion for some time about the idea of applying a sort of Standards & Poor's or Moody's-style confidence rating to different offerings, and it's-- you could argue that the MRC plays that role to some extent, although obviously in a very different way. 33:17 I'm not suggesting it's analogous. 33:19 And I sometimes wonder, although those schemes would be very difficult to apply, I wonder if we're heading into a market in which you can see something like that becoming more important to buyers. 33:29 Um, at the moment, we have a kind of one-size-fits-all accreditation where you're either accredited or you're not. 33:36 But perhaps there's space for different gradations between those two extremes, so to speak, and maybe that's something that some buyers would find valuable. 33:46 We've just done at SIM two really interesting studies which we'll be releasing to our members. 33:50 Um, first of all, a piece looking at identity resolution and data matching in the TV space, and secondly, a piece looking at the veracity and accuracy of householding data. 34:03 Um, and in both cases, the kind of central lesson is that data matching is far from a certain automated process. 34:13 It's messy and fiddly and complicated, and the sooner we all wake up and recognize that, I think probably the better we can get ahead with making progress. 34:22 There's a famous quote, isn't there, that we mustn't let the impossibility of perfection stand in the way of the quest for progress, and I think there's, there's something in that. Um, we're always estimating. 34:31 We're always estimating. Yeah, no, that would be, um, a huge thing 'cause, you know, people, um, 34:39 I think even just, you know, going through the process of writing methodology docs for these things is kind of over- overwhelming when you think about if you were a buyer and you had to-- It is all-- I, I mean, it's statistics and, you know, confidence levels and, um, then you're bringing multiple-- You know, everyone's gotta string together multiple data sets to, 34:57 to kind of glue everything together. And so it is, you know, I think the, um, 35:03 you know, the sooner people understood that, that that is-- you wanna figure out the quality of the modeling and the, and the, the methodology and not necessarily assume that it is, like, to the 10th decimal point correct. 35:14 Well, I, I mean, excitingly, I think our, our modeling is becoming increasingly sophisticated. 35:19 You know, we have-- If you look at the wider marketplace with advances, you know, most obviously in areas like generative I- AI, but also you look at some of the advances in areas like synthetic data or VIDS and so on and so forth, and these have the potential, I think, to be transformational. 35:37 Um, we're obviously still in the test-and-learn stage. You know, the WFA's, um, you know, the, the Halo project and Project Origin in the UK are using VIDS, but they're not let- yet commercially deployed. 35:48 Um, synthetic data is, is very important in some fields, but it's still gaining traction, I think, in, in the kind of media planning and buying space. 35:58 But I do think we'll see these methodologies becoming increasingly important as we look to capitalize on huge advances in computing power. 36:06 There was a very interesting discussion in a forum I'm on at the moment, um, talking about the, the potential of quantum computing now, which is obviously, uh, you know, still in development, and we're somewhere away from applying quantum computing in the measurement space. 36:20 But there are clearly huge advances in the levels of sophistication that we can apply to some of these areas coming down the tr- the train lines towards us, and it's gonna be exciting to get ready for those and see how they improve the measurement marketplace. 36:36 Well, John, I've loved this conversation. I know our audience is gonna, uh, love it as well, and I'm very grateful for your time. It's been a pleasure, Michael. Let's do it again soon. All right. Thank you. 36:48 [upbeat music] Thank you for joining us on this episode of Screen Wars. I hope you enjoyed the discussion. You can find out more about CrossScreen Media at crossscreenmedia.com. 36:58 Please don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, State of the Screens. You can find us on social media, @crossscreenmedia. Join us next time for more insights and analysis straight from the experts.
