With CES Debut, L’Oréal seeks to reinvent hair-dye application with the Colorsonic at-home device

This article was first reported — and published by Digiday sibling Glossy

L’Oréal is out to revolutionize a category of beauty it first invented: at-home hair dye.

On Wednesday at CES, L’Oréal is debuting a new at-home device called Colorsonic, which can be used to mix and apply L’Oréal Paris hair dye more easily and reliably than the DIY version of the last 115 years. L’Oréal first invented synthetic hair dye, with a product called “Aureole,” in 1907. As noted by Guive Balooch, global head of research and innovation at L’Oréal’s tech incubator, hair color formulation has since gone through significant innovation, but hair color application has not.

Balooch pointed to two big tensions in the current hair dye application process, across both home and salon usage. The first is the elaborate process of using an at-home dye, which involves donning latex gloves and mixing formulas to create a dye and dealing with the mess of application itself. The second is getting the right color in a salon, especially for those who have moved or are traveling.

“Colorsonic is a way to use technology to break some of the boundaries that people have when it comes to their fear of coloring their hair. That’s especially today, when we’re at home and want to do more things at home. We need to make people’s lives easier [when they] do it,” said Balooch.

For at-home hair dye, users can purchase a special cartridge by L’Oréal Paris (the first L’Oréal portfolio brand to offer Colorsonic dye) and place it into the body of the device, which then automatically mixes the color. The device then dispenses the color evenly across the hair via a comb-like feature at the other end.

Meanwhile, for salon usage, L’Oréal introduced a new AI machine called Coloright, which is about the size of a soda machine and functions as a measurement tool and color dispenser. First, colorists use a handheld measurement tool to scan clients’ hair to assess its history and health. They then use the Modiface AR app connected to the Coloright system to help clients choose a color out of 1,500 possible shades. Subsequently, Coloright personalizes and dispenses a dye formula. Color clients can access their formulas in any global salon with the device.

“We knew we could digitalize the [hair-dye] experience and make it possible. We hope to disrupt both home and salon hair color with tech,” said Balooch.

Though L’Oréal has worked on the device for the past seven years, its arrival comes after significant growth in the at-home hair dye market since 2020. According to data from The NPD Group, the at-home hair-dye category experienced a 17% lift in year-over-year sales between Jan. 2021 and Nov. 2021, and a 77% increase compared to the same time in 2019.

L’Oréal has attended CES as an exhibitor since 2012 when it launched its tech incubator. The incubator’s previous CES unveiling in Jan. 2021 was a water-saving sink specially designed for salons. That product is currently in 300 salons in France, and the company plans to launch it in a minimum of 10,000 salons globally by the second quarter of 2022. L’Oréal expects this sink to collectively save up to 1 billion gallons of water annually.

Balooch also noted that the Colorsonic cartridge uses 54% less plastic, compared to the usual at-home dye kits. Plus, the device comes with reusable gloves, thereby preventing up to 23 tons of plastic from being thrown away each year, if used by all L’Oréal Paris hair-dye users. Over the course of five years, L’Oréal tested the device on 400 people in multiple countries, and with different hair types and lengths, focusing on the ergonomic design and device performance.

“Our century-long, deep experience and leadership in hair coloration has allowed our researchers, data scientists and tech engineers to completely revisit and reinvent the hair coloring experience,” said Barbara Lavernos, Deputy CEO in charge of research, innovation and technology. “L’Oréal’s [tech incubator] leadership allows us to push the boundaries of tech multiplied by science for breakthroughs in more personalized, inclusive and sustainable beauty experiences.”

Colorsonic’s use will be contained to L’Oréal Paris products, at first, with distribution planned for the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023. The retail price has yet to be determined.

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‘The real issue here is around publisher trust’: Advertisers on alert as cookie consent concerns rise

There are many things advertisers don’t know about how cookies — the backbone of programmatic advertising — work. One of them being how they’re obtained. It turns out pretty sneakily on occasion. According to a recent audit, a large number of cookies used to target audiences on the 1,000 biggest publishers in Europe are done so without the consent of the person who would see the ad — a problem because this shouldn’t be happening since the arrival of a wide-ranging privacy law four years ago.

To be clear, this isn’t a new issue by any means. Privacy experts have been sounding the alarm as far back as when that privacy law (the General Data Protection Regulation) came into effect across Europe. At the time marketers were concerned, but not alarmed. After all, publishers assured them that they wouldn’t collect Europeans’ consent without their consent. Now, they’re alarmed. They don’t know how cast iron those assurances really are — and more importantly whether they ever can be.

Cue a scramble from marketers trying to figure out what this all means for them. They want to know if the audience targeting they’re doing on publisher sites is using non-compliant cookies and if so how prevalent it is across the media they buy. For one global CPG business, these checks will start over the coming weeks. 

“We’re aiming for either January or February to conduct a similar audit to the one Ebiquity commissioned,” said the advertiser’s chief media officer, who spoke to Digiday on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the topic. “If the audit confirms what has already been reported then we have to think about moving our dollars around so that we’re no longer exposed to these types of breaches.”

Opinions like this raise the question of how much advertisers really stand to lose if they reduce or pull their programmatic advertising. The audience targeting that informs where those dollars go is essentially a probability game. Making it work means scooping up ad impressions from hundreds of thousands of websites sent by as many supply-side platforms deemed necessary. Like everything else in media, however, there are trade-offs with this way of advertising. If advertisers have to constantly cast and recast a wider net over tens of thousands to millions of websites to find user IDs based on cookies then chances are they also end up buying tons of lower-quality inventory in the process.

“It’s a balancing act for marketers between reach and how respectful the publishers they buy from are of consumer data,” said Brian Kane, chief operating officer of Sourcepoint, a company that helps companies measure the privacy experience of sites. “There’s a growing realization among some of the largest companies in the world that they play a role in the quality of the media ecosystem so they want to make sure they’re doing it with a level of assurance that consumers are being respected.”

Add the senior marketer at another global CPG advertiser, who also only agreed to talk to Digiday on condition of anonymity, to this list. In fact, they’ve threatened to shut down programmatic advertising entirely if publishers can’t fix the issue. Even if doing so means pouring more of their dollars into walled gardens where they have a limited view of what that money actually buys them. It’s an option that, at least for this marketer, is the least bad one. It’s also the extreme option — especially if the issue taints large swathes of media.

Threatening to shut down programmatic spending is not a reality for many advertisers — at least not at large. In a world where digital ad spend keeps growing faster than expectations, and advertisers are fixated on the unproven allure of audience targeting, the money has to go somewhere. What’s more likely to happen, especially when it comes to ad trackers collecting people’s data without their consent on larger sites, is that it leads to conversations behind the scenes. In other words, advertisers talk to publishers about what they can do to plug these issues and subsequently secure more media dollars as a result.

“The way that programmatic works means that advertisers can’t activate activity unless a cookie consent string is in place so we’re protected to a degree when it comes to whether we’re doing the right thing,” said the senior marketer. “The real issue here is around publisher trust and the fact that it is perceived that cookies are being dropped on sites before publishers have got the consent from their readers to do so.”

Publishers are in a bind here. There are marketers who believe they view seeking consent for tracking cookies as an afterthought — something they ask for forgiveness for not doing, not ask for permission to do. Sure, there are publishers that probably have taken up this stance given the realms of money they stand to make. But there are many others that don’t. The issue, however, is that regardless of the publisher’s intent, they aren’t always in full control of the cookies on their site. So even if they wanted to ensure that all readers had provided their consent to be tracked by cookies, there are times when that wouldn’t be possible. When a cookie is loaded on a page it calls a server to then register that the cookie has been served. Sometimes that cookie doesn’t just call the server, it calls other cookies. Essentially, one primary cookie could subsequently call upon hundreds of other cookies, which is where things get tricky for publishers trying to keep track of what’s happening on their site.

Why? Mainly because ad tech companies have a higher priority economic incentive, said Tom Triscari, an economist at consulting firm Lemonade Projects. They need to constantly expand impression volume in any way possible to reduce marginal cost and get more price-competitive with Google’s own programmatic marketplace. At the same time, advertisers are putting downward pressure on their fees and commissions through procurement, which puts more pressure on ad tech vendors to find alternative ways of generating profits.

“This is the name of the game,” said Triscari. “Keep the audience-targeting belief system moving forward 24/7 365 days of the year. When all the sell-side supply chain actors have a profitable hedge in perpetual motion, everyone seems to work in concert to keep the ball in the air for as long as possible. Why would anyone expect anything different?”

In some ways, this is a problem of advertisers’ own making — one that’s being brought into sharp focus. Indeed, Ebiquity’s research isn’t the first, nor will it be the last of its kind. In fact, Adalytics published a similar report as recently as last month. Like Ebiquity, it found that ad tech vendors are still tracking people across the European Union who have not given their permission to do so. That’s raised fresh doubts over the IAB’s self-styled Transparency and Consent Framework, which is already in hot water with privacy regulators. The issue being that the TCF is a standardized way for ad tech vendors to see whether a user has provided consent for their data to be shared via cookies. Last November, however, the trade body all but said that it doesn’t always work as intended. It said that it expected the framework to be found in breach of the GDPR. It comes after Belgium’s privacy watchdog found that the framework didn’t comply with the GDPR’s transparency guidelines and processed sensitive data like political affiliation and sexual orientation without explicit consent. While the IAB maintains these loopholes can be closed, the growing body of evidence suggests doing so will be anything but straightforward. 

“TCF is inherently flawed and non-compliant,” said Ruben Schreurs, group chief product officer at Ebiquity. “It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee; take responsibility for protecting people’s rights in a deeply troubled ecosystem.”

Damning as the growing evidence of malfeasance is, marketers are inclined to take it all with a pinch of salt — hence the scramble to do their own audits. The reason: more often than not the data is being reported by consent management platforms like the one Ebiquity commissioned to do its own analysis. To understand why this is a big deal, it’s important to understand what CMPs do. Simply put, they’re the technical infrastructure a business uses to collect and store what data customers have consented to be used and for what. Not all CMPs are wired the same, however. Some CMPs can prevent the firing of certain scripts based on the user’s input. Others are merely signal passers and do not block scripts from firing. The former could theoretically benefit from exposing the latter. And based on Ebiquity’s report it seems many CMP installations are grossly misconfigured. Understandably, marketers seem inclined to trust but verify the data that’s coming to light. 

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The Rundown: How do esports organizations generate revenue?

To become sustainable in the long term, esports organizations are experimenting with an ever-expanding variety of revenue streams.

Last week, gaming streamer Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm tweeted that all esports orgs — aside from the widely popular FaZe Clan — ”don’t make money.” The tweet sparked a flurry of discussion, with some industry observers, including Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag, co-owner of leading esports team 100 Thieves, swooping in to rebut Beahm’s statement.

The fracas made it clear that many gamers and esports fans remain unaware of how esports organizations make money — and just how much they make. Many esports organizations still struggle to turn a profit, even though gaming has expanded into one of the most popular forms of entertainment worldwide. Though esports viewership numbers rival those of traditional sports, the esports audience spends far less money than fans of traditional sports, in large part because the average esports fan is younger and has less disposable income. Furthermore, while traditional sports leagues can generate revenue by licensing media rights to broadcasters, most esports events are streamed free of charge on digital platforms such as Twitch, blocking off this potential revenue stream to esports leagues and the teams that share their spoils.

Despite these difficulties, the largest esports organizations are already raking in millions of dollars in revenues every year. To beef up their pre-existing revenue streams and gain new ones, some of the most prominent esports organizations acquired smaller companies or went public in 2021. Digiday spoke to esports experts and executives to shed some light on the different revenue streams leveraged by leading esports orgs.

The key details

  • Many leading esports organizations prioritize three primary sources of revenue: esports, entertainment and apparel. Esports covers revenues gained via organizations’ competitive teams: revenue shares with esports leagues, tournament winnings and team-wide brand partnerships. Entertainment includes revenues gained through team-affiliated creators and influencers who don’t play competitively; many of them have their own brand partnerships and sponsorships.
  • Each of these three pillars represents roughly a third of 100 Thieves’ revenues, according to COO John Robinson. “Part of the reason why we believe in this diversified model is because all three of those things have been successful in our first four years,” Robinson said. The organization’s recent acquisition of peripherals company Higround goes under the apparel arm of this strategy, allowing 100 Thieves to expand its merchandise offerings from clothing to keyboards and mouse pads.
  • The ranking of these revenue sources varies from team to team. “Merch is a great business for a lot of teams, but I would say, for most esports teams, league revenue share and sponsorships are probably a higher margin,” said Jordan Sherman, CEO of Immortals, which pivoted to a zero-profit merchandise strategy last year. “For us, revenue shares and sponsorship, and then merch, was kind of the order.”
  • These aren’t the only revenue sources for esports orgs, though: some have begun to position themselves less as competitive teams and more as full-service agencies offering brands a seamless connection with a pre-loaded fan base. “We have a fairly robust marketing services or brand consulting group that represents clients like State Farm within gaming and esports,” said Dave Bialek, co-founder and CEO of the esports company ReKTGlobal. “So we’ve got this really robust division for brand consulting and media buying, which is more of a B2B play — but it’s a really strong business that operates under the ReKTGlobal umbrella, and people are probably not even aware that they’re part of our organization.” Of ReKTGlobal’s roughly $15 million in 2021 revenues, “two-thirds of our revenues come from there,” said ReKTGlobal co-founder and chairman Amish Shah.

Untraditional sports

The prominence of merchandise as an esports revenue stream highlights some of the fundamental differences between how esports organizations and traditional sports teams generate revenue. Traditional sports leagues such as the NFL, MLB and NBA often offer manufacturers collective rights for league jerseys: for example, Nike is the only licensed jersey manufacturer for the NFL. “The major soccer teams in Europe will contract with an Adidas or Puma or Nike, and they will, in turn, sell their own individual licenses to make T-shirts, to make cups, to make whatever it may be,” said Alex Romer, CEO of merchandise company We Are Nations. “Some do some of their product direct, some license it completely, but at the jersey level, they license it out in return for a fee.”

Esports organizations often field teams across multiple competitive leagues, making this sort of league-wide licensing deal difficult. Instead, orgs will partner directly with manufacturers to lead their merchandise production, as Immortals does with We Are Nations, or handle design in-house, as is the case for 100 Thieves.

Evolving models

As esports become further entrenched in popular culture, it’s likely that more esports organizations will transform from competitive teams into agencies and brand consultancies designed to connect brands with gamers. Most of them already have all the talent and resources necessary to offer these types of services; the streamers and players who form the rosters of esports orgs know better than anyone else what makes gamers tick. With independent creators such as Imane “Pokimane” Anys already forming their own consultancies, organizations that don’t provide these kinds of brand services risk falling behind or getting trapped in an older modality of esports. “We think that there’s just tremendous opportunity for us, as it relates to growing the business — and the right business,” Bialek said.

The bigger picture

Some esports teams have demonstrated viable pathways to profitability. In 2020, Team SoloMid claimed to be profitable; last year, Sherman told Digiday that many of Immortals’ individual sub-businesses were profitable. What’s clear is that simply copying the revenue streams of traditional sports leagues, or focusing solely on competitive esports in general, is not profitable. As esports organizations look to pivot from older competition-focused models, it’s more imperative than ever for them to power this expansion with new investment rounds and public offerings, bringing in fresh ideas via mergers and acquisitions.

“If you look at the different businesses that a TSM, or a Team Liquid, or a Cloud9 are in, it goes beyond ticket sales and merchandise — you know, traditional revenue streams,” said Ann Hand, CEO of esports entertainment company Super League. “There’s way more potential than anyone’s ever been able to quantity for the category of professional esports; however, there’s no doubt it’s taking longer, and everybody wanted it to just be this rocket ship overnight.”

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2022 spells more podcast partnerships for publishers as the audio field gets noisy

In an effort to up their audio games in 2022, a growing number of publishers plan to produce podcasts in partnership with other production companies and media organizations in an effort to stand out in an increasingly crowded field.

“At a minimum,” working with partners on podcasts is for cross promotion purposes, said Kathleen Osborn, vp of audio at Vice Media Group, who plans to work with more outside organizations and platforms to create podcasts this year. “The stronger… reason to do it is much more about being able to do more and do it better. I think it produces better work, and engenders a more collaborative approach to the audio offerings,” she said.

Steven Goldstein, CEO and founder of digital audio agency Amplifi Media, believes the reason more podcast partnerships are cropping up this year is because listenership has plateaued since last summer and competition for audience rises. “I think a lot of podcasts hit the wall,” he said.

Of the 2.4 million podcasts on Apple Podcasts tracked by Podcast Industry Insights, 22% have produced a podcast episode in the last 90 days, according to Goldstein’s analysis of the data published in December. Over 1 million of the 2.4 million podcasts have not produced content in over a year. While some of that could be attributed to limited series, Goldstein said it could suggest the difficulty of “creating a hit.”

According to Edison Research and Triton Digital’s Infinite Dial 2021 report, weekly U.S. podcast listeners listen to 5.1 podcast shows, on average. The number of English-language podcast series in the market increased by 39% from January 2020 through October 2021, according to podcast analytics and ad platform Backtracks.

More shows this year means listeners are “overwhelmed with choices,” Goldstein said. 

The publishers eyeing podcast partnerships this year

Podcasts created in collaboration with other organizations are being developed and discussed at publishers like Vice Media Group, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and ViacomCBS.

“We’re doing it more next year [2022] … we just haven’t announced them [yet],” Osborn said.

Renita Jablonski, director of audio at The Washington Post, said “a couple of the ideas we are looking at developing could be ripe for partnering on, so it’s certainly something that’s on the table.” 

And Steve Raizes, svp at ViacomCBS Podcasts, said the team is “actively developing” new content with “really great partners,” but declined to share who those partners are. ViacomCBS Podcasts has existing deals with iHeart and its cable network brands MTV and Nickelodeon, he said.

“Working with other production companies… is something I’m looking into. That’s where the industry is going to be honest,” said Jazmín Aguilera, head of audio at the Los Angeles Times.

At Vox Media, the daily explainer podcast “Today, Explained” will reach a larger audience through a new radio distribution partnership with WNYC Studios, said Vox Media Studios president Marty Moe said in an email response.

The Post and ViacomCBS declined to share how advertising revenue would be divvied up from podcasts created in collaboration with other organizations — both companies said they would not divulge details on individual podcast business deals. Vice Media Group did not respond to questions about revenue share by publishing time.

An L.A. Times spokesperson told Digiday, “We have worked with collaborators and vendors in a variety of ways and expect that each scenario will continue to be somewhat unique. In order to fulfill our creative and commercial ambitions – and expand our podcast portfolio – we’re looking to partner with organizations and people who can help us tell more stories, and share revenue equitably.”

Vying for more eardrums

Marketing a new podcast on an existing show can help bring over some of those listeners — a lot easier than trying to reach someone who isn’t a podcast listener yet, said Stephen Smyk, svp of podcast and influencer marketing at audio agency Veritone One.

“The single biggest way that people historically have been able to cost effectively get new listeners is by promoting their shows on podcasts, or being a co-host on another podcast,” he said. Podcast production teams might be spending money on marketing and not seeing it pay off with new listeners, Smyk added, so they are relying on the trusted voice of a podcast host to recommend a new show. 

Promoting a competitors’ content “might not be dissimilar [to the way] awards ceremonies are generally reflecting on the work of their peers,” said Backtracks CEO Jonathan Gill. “We see that in podcasting now. In the one sense they are competitors, but when they do something great there’s nothing bad about promoting that in the world.”

Discovery of content in podcasts is “a hard problem” but cross-promoting shows is “making it easier to discover content…in an organic way,” he added.

Fueling collaboration in podcast production

Gill said some organizations that produce podcasts could be “good at creating content but not good at getting it out to the world,” while others might be “good at distribution but need original IP.” Working together on a show means tapping into each organizations’ strengths and giving the podcast a leg up.

Having an “outside collaborator” working with ViacomCBS on its podcasts means bringing together groups of people who are good at different things, Raizes said.

Osborn at Vice Media Group believes this kind of collaboration means podcast teams are “pushing each other to do cooler, more interesting, more satisfying, more impactful work,” which “can be really additive for audiences.”

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‘We looked to digital’: How a regional grocery chain is using Facebook live shopping to get in front of more online shoppers

As the social commerce arms race continues to take shape, Texas-based grocery chain H-E-B is banking on Facebook’s live shopping feature to reach more shoppers, who are increasingly spending more time online due to the on-going pandemic.

It’s also a move to maintain brand relevance and build an online community after Covid-19 safety precautions shuttered the grocer’s in-store cooking demonstration food samplings known as Cooking Connection.

“It’s our job to make sure that we continue that relationship with them even when they’re not setting foot into our stores,” said Giovanna Dimperio, senior director of digital marketing at H-E-B. “When COVID struck, and we weren’t able to have that resource in the stores, we looked to digital.”

Originally, the regional grocery chain, which also has locations in northeast Mexico, started its weekly, interactive cooking series on Zoom in November 2020. But after Facebook rolled out its live shopping capabilities last May, H-E-B folded the social media giant into its digital video strategy.

According to Dimperio, the Facebook series features local chefs and allows viewers to purchase H-E-B products used during the tutorial, down to the very bowl that the chef is using. On average, the Facebook virtual life classes rack up hundreds of thousands of views. One video in particular, which focused on French cuisine, pulled in nearly 500,000 views. 

“We also see, not only positive engagement on the content that we’ve put out, but we’ve created this really interesting sense of community,” Dimperio said, referring to customers interacting with the chef’s as well as one another in the comments. 

It’s unclear how the project is funded or what’s been the financial return on investment as Dimperio declined to offer those details. Per Kantar, H-E-B spent $16.2 million on media from January through September of 2021. In 2020, the grocer spent $28.8 million, down from the $30.2 million spent on media in 2019. Those figures do not include social media spend as Kantar does not track those numbers.

It may not be traditional advertising, but Dimperio says there’s marketing value in community engagement to build brand awareness and keep H-E-B top of mind. As the marketing team looks to create more interactive and participatory content this year, Dimperio said that digital community engagement will help them learn more about their customers.

“We’re always looking to test and innovate in digital spaces to help connect with consumers in the way that they want. We’re creating content that we think is useful to Texans and try to tailor it to their needs,” she said.

The idea of shopping on social media, especially live shopping, is still relatively new for Americans. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest all rolled out or ramped up livestream shopping features around the same time mid-last year. eMarketer reported that social commerce sales in the U.S. surpassed $30 billion last year, albeit those figures are overshadowed by China’s live shopping market of $351.65 billion in 2021.

While there’s a growing interest, Nick Meyer, director of social strategy at Campbell Ewald points out that introducing livestream shopping capabilities has to be complementary to brand content to avoid pushing hard sales.

“Don’t offer live shopping just because it exists,” Meyer said. “Do it because you have the right products, people, and experiences that can be improved on with the ease of live shopping.”

Cooking Connection has since returned to H-E-B stores with food sampling as of late May 2021. The grocer maintains Covid-safety protocol with hand sanitizer and no hand-to-hand contact between chefs and shoppers. However, Dimperio says the grocer will continue to prioritize social commerce, experimenting beyond Facebook as social media platforms eventually offer more.

“Our digital work moving forward is really, how do we make sure that we’re connecting with customers in a way that they want, and shifting platforms to meet the customer where they’re spending time,” she said. 

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NBCUniversal’s Kelly Abcarian is set on solving the biggest math problem of her life

This story is part of Digiday’s Masters of Uncertainty series, a look at people and companies at the center of media’s defining storylines. Find the rest here.

Kelly Abcarian loves math. “I come from a family of math nerds,” she said. “I’ve always been drawn to numbers.” 

That’s good, because the TV advertising industry is in the midst of developing a new math, and Abcarian, the evp of measurement and impact for NBCUniversal’s advertising and partnerships division, has given herself quite the equation to solve.

When the Media Rating Council stripped Abcarian’s old employer, Nielsen, of its accreditation back in September, it threw the industry into a race to try and come up with a new standard — or standards — and Abcarian’s current company, NBCUniversal, has assumed a lead position.

But in overhauling TV and streaming ad measurement, companies like NBCUniversal and executives like Abcarian are not solving for X. They are doing multivariable calculus, with the only consensus answer at the moment among buyers and sellers being that the days of a single dominant measurement currency are over. 

“You’re going to see so much change in the next 12 to 18 months,” said Mike Law, U.S. CEO of Dentsu’s Carat.

The measurement expert

When NBCUniversal hired Abcarian in April 2021, after she spent 16 years working at Nielsen, the announcement sent a signal that the Comcast-owned media conglomerate was looking to step up its measurement work.

Abcarian’s hire “showed their commitment to change and their continued ability to bring in really smart people who know the subject matter and can rally around a cause,” Law said.

As a fellow industry executive steeped in research and data, Magna evp and managing director of audience intelligence and strategy Brian Hughes was “heartened by the fact that somebody so entrenched in how measurement has worked and the minutiae and details is in the middle of this effort. 

“For lack of a better term, I love to see research people at the center of evolving measurement and research,” he said. 

As the person who oversees the Association of National Advertisers’ measurement efforts, which includes the ANA’s own Cross-Media Measurement program, ANA group evp Bill Tucker said to himself, “Hey, here’s someone and an organization that’s an important organization, particularly in cross-media measurement, that we’re going to get to work with.”

Little could he have known at the time the extent to which the ANA, NBCUniversal and the broader industry would be working together.

Calling for change

In August 2021, Abcarian announced that NBCUniversal had sent out requests for proposals from measurement providers to participate in the Comcast-owned media conglomerate’s plan to create a new measurement system.

With Nielsen in COVID-induced upheaval, and its own plans to sunset its currency by 2024, “I knew that was our moment to explore the options,” said Abcarian.

Those options have ballooned to more than 100 companies. And rather than trying to find one measurement provider to become the new Nielsen — or to reassert Nielsen as the singular currency — the process is meant to certify different providers of different types of measurement, as evinced by a chart that NBCUniversal has compiled categorizing companies into six categories that range from audience measurement to business outcome guarantee.

NBCUniversal’s measurement framework

“What Kelly’s done is she’s become the mouthpiece for what many of us have been saying for the longest time [about the need to change the industry’s measurement yardstick],” said Jo Kinsella, CEO of measurement firm TVSquared, which is among the companies participating in NBCU’s RFP process.

In an industry overrun with thought leaders, announcements and calls to action often don’t amount to much. But with Nielsen’s legitimacy shaken, Abcarian’s message — coming from an executive of her background and a company of NBCU’s stature — is resonating, particularly because she’s backed it up with moves meant to build consensus and coordination.

In October, NBCUniversal announced a Measurement Innovation Forum to bring together industry organizations like the ANA and VAB — which had sounded the siren on Nielsen’s miscounting — advertisers including Ford and Target and agency groups including Dentsu, Magna and Omnicom’s OMD, to participate in the company’s measurement work. On Nov. 9, the company convened forum members for its inaugural gathering, and it plans to hold a second session in the first quarter of 2021.

“[Kelly]’s not letting the industry forget what we owe to each other,” said Kelly Metz, managing director for advanced TV activation at Omnicom Media Group. “In the television industry, we owe each other trust. If everybody tries to walk their own path and doesn’t have a level of coordination that we require, we’re going to do a disservice to our own industry.”

Checking her work

Given her tenure at Nielsen, Abcarian holds a unique position in the current measurement shakeup. After 16 years on the side of the establishment at Nielsen, she is now among the loudest voices calling for change. Depending on one’s perception, this change in tune either lends Abcarian credibility or undermines her.

On the one hand, Abcarian is very well versed in the workings of Nielsen’s measurement system and was active in updating it.

She worked on the creation of Nielsen’s Total Audience measurement system to measure across linear TV and digital, struck a deal with Roku to debut a streaming ad measurement currency and led the company’s advanced video advertising group, which worked on addressable TV advertising and was bought by Roku. That track record gives her credibility when working on upgrading measurement today and communicating what upgrades need to be made.

“She was on the forefront of their whole addressable TV measurement effort and foresaw the fact that TV is going from a broad medium to a more personalized one in certain ways,” said Hughes.

On the other hand, Abcarian spent years advocating for Nielsen’s measurement system and its panel-based approach.

“The panel will continue to underpin measurement and be the truth set,” Abcarian told Digiday in an interview in late 2018, an interview in which she also said that Nielsen would play “a critical role” in estimating the entire viewing population as people tune out of traditional TV.

Speaking with Digiday for this article, Abcarian said “the role of a panel should be minimized because the fact that we think we can count people in this fragmented world with a tiny panel leads to not only inaccuracy but also leads to undercounting all audiences.”

I truly believe we cannot approach measurement in the new world with a legacy lens.
Abcarian

To be fair, a lot has changed in the three years between those statements. However, the dissonance cannot be ignored.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” said one agency executive of Abcarian’s change in stance. “The problem with Kelly coming from Nielsen is that at Nielsen she carried that banner forever for the validity of Nielsen, on how this was the best way to measure. There’s blowback because she changed teams and everyone remembers how she forced their hands when it was time to re-up their Nielsen contracts. But the benefit is you had someone defect from Nielsen and say Nielsen is not the right way to go forward.”

Both perspectives appear to be valid. And like the solution to a quadratic equation, both can be true without one negating the other. As anyone who has taken an algebra class may remember, sometimes you think you have arrived at the right answer only to check your math and find yourself needing to recalculate. Abcarian seems to have done just that, albeit with much higher stakes.

“Force-fitting legacy approaches to measure the complexity of the sophisticated consumer that we’re dealing with as we move ahead is a path to failure,” said Abcarian. “I truly believe we cannot approach measurement in the new world with a legacy lens.”

The future of measurement

As important as it is to rally all sides of the industry around modernizing measurement, then there’s the work required to actually pull it off. Overhauling TV ad measurement is not akin to turning around the Titanic; it’s more like getting ad buyers and sellers to disembark the Titanic and board an armada of different measurement providers and to bridge those various ships as they sail in the same direction.

“I am optimistic but skeptical,” said Hughes. “There have been plenty of efforts in the past to do stuff around this that have not gone anywhere. There are so many different people who own different parts of the data that you need to do measurement well. Getting everyone to work together is no easy task.”

After NBCUniversal issued its call to arms in August, some agency executives fretted about the potential for the measurement landscape to fracture. NBCUniversal was conducting its RFP process, and ViacomCBS was adding support for VideoAmp, and eventually WarnerMedia announced that it is talking with 10 to 15 different measurement providers to add Nielsen alternatives next year. 

“One thing we can’t allow to happen is one network group to go with Samba TV, another with VideoAmp and another with Comscore. It has to be a unified decision of alternative currencies that are allowed to be accessed in the upfront,” said a second agency executive. 

In other words, this is not a one-sided, winner-take-all situation. NBCUniversal and other network owners can add support for alternative measurement providers and even attempt to incentivize advertisers to adopt new, preferred currencies, but advertisers can respond to these pushes by pulling their dollars or resigning themselves to retain Nielsen as the currency. If everything is on the table, then so is the status quo.

“Practically there is no other way this happens without advertisers and media partners coming together. Of course the buy side has to be involved. We pay for everything. Of course they need us to participate,” said Metz. She added, “That’s why a new currency will exist, to meet our advertising objectives.”

When, though? And how will that affect how the money moves around the TV and streaming marketplace? 

No one seems to know. The money typically moves in response to measurement results, so flipping the equation may put the money in a bit of a holding pattern until the measurement situation is sorted. Even the question of how this all will play out in this year’s upfront negotiations seems to be without answer at the moment. 

Abcarian dodged the question of whether NBCUniversal will sign upfront deals in 2022 that are based primarily on non-Nielsen currency, though she didn’t dismiss the possibility. Agency executives have been similarly noncommittal (everything is part of the negotiation, even talking to journalists). But everyone seems to agree at the least that is change is coming…eventually.

Between the continued shift in audiences’ attentions to streaming and the MRC stripping Nielsen of its accreditation, “we have permission to move forward and do something different. Everybody’s eyes are open to it,” said Law. “There’s still testing, learning, trying, exploration leading into next year’s upfront, even through next year’s upfront. But by the time we get to [the 2023-24 upfront cycle], I think you’ll see some things starting to settle into place.”

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