Why your ad strategy needs both measurement and “attribution”

In the advertising industry, there is a persistent tendency to use the terms “measurement” and “attribution” interchangeably. There is just one problem there: They’re absolutely not the same thing.

To clear up this persistent confusion, let’s take a closer look at what both terms mean, and why they matter.

Incomplete data leads to guesswork and conflict

To determine what people are actually willing to pay or what the value is for an ad, you have to look at two distinct components: value metrics and sizing metrics.

If you don’t have both pieces—how efficient/targeted your campaign was, and how many people were exposed to it—you simply don’t have the data that you need to make an informed decision.

Without both value and sizing metrics, agencies and advertisers will create their own estimates of what they believe the numbers should be. This inevitably creates mistrust and misalignment.

For instance, media buyers have a responsibility to their clients to secure the best deal. Without reliable metrics, they will always estimate low to help insure that they are not making a mistake or overpaying based on unreliable or exaggerated figures.

Defining sizing metrics: How many people are exposed to the ad?

The first thing to understand is the sizing metric. On an absolute basis, sizing lets you know whether your ad is reaching a lot of people, or only a few. To accurately price an ad for buyers and sellers using CPMs (Cost Per 1000), you obviously need to know how many viewers are being delivered.

Traditional digital advertising is fundamentally a one-to-one relationship: Deliver an ad to a device like a phone or tablet, and assume there’s one set of eyeballs in front of that ad.

Place-based media, outdoor advertising—or, for that matter, linear TV or streaming video—is a “one to many” delivery. For example, if you have a television set in an airport waiting area, you can verify that an ad was sent to that set and played, but you have no idea how many people were there to see it. The number of people per set exposed to the ad can be substantial.

To solve this, The People Platform creates an estimate of the number of people in front of the sets. This is called a multiplier. The multiplier translates the number of sets which received an ad into a quantifiable number of people exposed.

This gives us a comparable sizing metric that allows buyers and sellers to calculate the size of the audience in a way that aligns with how linear television and digital streaming are measured and reported.

Understanding value metrics: The relative measures of impact

The second piece of the equation is the value metric.  Value metrics are anything that defines the value of an audience, such as demographics, geographical differences, media usage, or specific buyer behaviors or outcomes.

Unlike sizing, value metrics are relative measures. They are usually shown in relation to competitors in a network’s own space or across other media.

A few common examples of value metrics:

• Demographics: Does the audience skew young, old, male, or female?‍
• Lifestyle or product usage profiles: Are there more business travelers, or buyers of specific products (athletic sneakers, high-end steroes, etc)?‍
• Impact, lift, or outcomes: How much of a “lift” in brand recognition or purchase intent occurred after the exposure. How many viewers made a purchase after the exposure?

Here’s where things get a little more complex, but we’ll take it slow.

There's also an approach to be had that confirms attribution: a more concrete, definitive summary of how much impact a particular media or network had in an overall advertising campaign for a brand. This can be prohibitively pricey, and often unnecessary. While accurately measuring attribution can be expensive, brand lift and network-level outcomes offer practical, and reliable ways to understand whether a network's ads actually moved the needle. They provide accessible impact indicators, without requiring the rigor of a full attribution framework.

Creating a consistent ruler: Simplicity for buyers and sellers

There is an old adage in the industry: “If a media is not easy to buy, it probably won’t be.” To make place-based media easy to buy, we have to move beyond inconsistent counts and establish a consistent ruler that all the players can use and agree on.

Sellers want to spend their time with buyers selling their network, not their research. Buyers would rather hear “why is your network right for us,” instead of getting into the weeds about where the data comes from and why you should trust it.

The People Platform, in other words, takes this tension over the research component out of the mix. Buyers don’t have to blindly trust the research numbers the seller is providing, as there’s now a third-party in the equation that is offering reliable consistency.

To understand the importance of Consistency, it is key to think about the difference between precision and accuracy.

• Accuracy refers to correctness‍
• Precision refers to repeatability.

It is possible to have estimates that are:

• accurate but not precise
• precise but not accurate
• both—or neither

Ways things can go wrong—and how to fix it

Let’s look at an example. Often, people suggest the use of mobility data as a sizing metric. Mobility data is not the answer for audience size.

Simple counts are not sufficient. In any data set or research study, there will be “non-response” or missing data: people turn off their phones or leave a location before being picked up, and there are inconsistencies across networks and location types.

Data will vary based on duration of time in front of the screen and the probability of someone turning off their phone or even using your device within the location. If you go strictly off the mobility data counts you are always going to systematically understate the audience.

Alternatively, if each company creates their own method for modeling the missing data, all of the estimates will be different. It is major issue for buyers to have to evaluate each model and create their own method of adjustment for comparability.

Precision is often more important than accuracy for any trading currency. As long as the methodology is consistent and repeatable across all players, buyers can feel comfortable that they are comparing apples to apples. To ease the buying and selling process, “Consistency is King!” And that’s what The People Platform is offering.

The business case for better research

History shows that better research leads to increased revenue. When the TV business switched to the “PeopleMeter” in the late 1980s, reported audiences were 20 to 25% lower than the previous measurements had stated—but revenues went up. That is because the numbers were both more accurate and more precise. Media buyers were willing to pay a higher CPM for the certainty that the new tools provided.

It has been said often through the years that “If you are not in the Plan you won’t be in the buy.”  Consistency across networks and competitive media is a key step in getting into the “Plan.”  

By providing a neutral, third-party sizing metric that works hand-in-hand with value metrics, The People Platform both facilitates the job of the buyers and sellers and ensures that networks have the necessary tools to demonstrate their true worth.