Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement – the CIMM – Gets Launched
Nov 2, 2009 Industry News, TV and iTV Analytics, Web Analytics
The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (the CIMM) launched their website last week (http://www.cimm-us.org). Members in the coalition consists of TV programmers, advertisers, and ad agencies. While AT&T is represented, it is their Brand Marketing and Advertising SVP who is sitting on the council.
The CIMM released two research RFPs on their site last week. The two areas for investigation:
1. Investigate the current and future potential of TV measurement via set top box data
2. Cross-platform measurement of video across Television, Internet, and Mobile
This may sound simple, but don’t let the short sentences fool you. The first one alone is loaded with gotchas that will make responders think twice. First of all, they have to be the first of the set-top box vendors willing to be completely transparent with their data and their processes. This is unlikely to be undertaken by an operator for the usual price of a research study.
Who knows? Maybe I am wrong and one of them will step up in order to get first-mover advantage in the data-vending business. Maybe AT&T will get pulled in because of their participation in the council. The reason I am skeptical is that the operators are unlikely to arm programmers with better information to use against them in negotiations around carriage fees etc. without getting a really huge concession or advantage in return. Perhaps it might make more sense for a company like TiVo to participate than it would for a cable, telco or DBS operator.
As someone who wants access to the information, I hope I am wrong and would love to be proven so. We’ll see.
Tags: AT&T, CIMM, Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, cross-platform, data, Kantar, MEDIAWEEK, Metrics, multiplatform, Practical Marketing Analytics, Seely, set-top box, three screen viewing, video
Forrester Publishes Evaluation of Interactive Attribution Vendors: ClearSaleing, Visual IQ, And Atlas Lead, With [x+1] And Coremetrics Close Behind
Oct 21, 2009 Industry News, Web Analytics
I was just looking at the summary of the new Forrester report comparing interactive attribution vendors. My old friends at [x+1] are in the mix, even stacked up against players like Atlas, ClearSaleing, Visual IQ and CoreMetrics – despite the fact that attribution is not mainly what they do. They do it because it needs to be done well in order for them to deliver on their core competency, which is using industry-leading optimization of performance for online media and websites. Attribution is critical to optimizing media and site performance because you need an objective function (a numeric “score”) to optimize or even improve: attribution is how you keep score. Attribution is the process whereby credit for a conversion (a goal action, like a sale, subscription, or lead) is allocated among the many marketing activities and actors selling that product or service.
Historically, 100% of the credit for a sale has been attributed to the last online marketing “touch” before a purchase was made, in more or less this way:
1. All touches (impressions, clicks, conversions) needed to be tracked in the same system to be “attributable”
2. When a goal action occurred, the database was searched for the most recent impression with a click. If one is found, then it got attributed “credit” for the goal action. This is what is sometimes referred to as a “clickthrough conversion”.
3. If the whole attribution window (the time frame for which impressions are considered eligible for attribution) is searched and no click is found, then the most recent impression is found, and assigned (usually partial) credit for the conversion. This is sometimes referred to as a “view-through conversion”.
The new paradigm in attribution, represented by the offerings of the firms reviewed in the referenced Forrester paper, involves the effort to model, understand, and optimize the sequences of marketing activities that touch a prospective customer. Each of these “touches” is seen to have potential influence on the ultimate outcome (conversion vs. non-conversion), and the solutions here are ways of assigning a value to the contribution of each interaction. Some approaches to doing this are built upon models of the buying process, others are more brute force. Some vendors offer this as an approach for marketing mix allocation, others are more focused on banner, search, and site optimization.
If all this sounds fun and interesting to you, then you must be in analytics. Otherwise, the takeaway for you will just be this: better ROI (and better ROI measurement) from online marketing activities.
Tags: [x+1], Atlas, Attribution, attribution window, Bill Seely, ClearSaleing, click, clickthrough, conversion, CoreMetrics, Forrester, Practical Marketing Analytics, viewthrough, Visual IQ
Practical Marketing Analytics’ Bill Seely interviewed in InteractiveTV Today
Oct 16, 2009 Industry News, TV and iTV Analytics
Bill is interviewed in Rick Howe’s “Dear iTV Doctor” column published today (Friday October 16, 2009). Check it out at http://bit.ly/mLaD7.
The topic was how to apply interactive television to engage and activate a TV show’s superfans. Bill talks about the impact of tailoring the design and features of an interactive experience embedded in a TV program to the needs and interests of the hard-core fans of the program.
Rick’s column appears regularly in Tracey Swedlow’s InteractiveTV Today (ITVT) (www.itvt.com), the most widely read and trusted news source on the rapidly emerging medium of multiplatform, broadband interactive television (ITV).
Tags: Bill Seely, core audience, core viewership, interactive experience, Interactive Television, Interactive TV, Interactive TV Today, Interview, itvt.com, Practical Marketing Analytics, Rick Howe, superfans, TV and iTV Analytics
How To Maximize Viewer Participation In Your Interactive TV Applications
Sep 30, 2009 Industry News, TV and iTV Analytics
Here are several ideas to drive maximum interactive participation and duration for your interactive television application:
Idea One: Begin With the End in Mind (apologies to Stephen Covey)
What is your business objective? If you get specific about what you want viewers to do with your interactive experience, you can design to make that more likely. For example, if you want viewers to interact for a long time, that favors design that is immersive and absorbing, with lots of content and lots of features. On the other hand, if you want to get the highest possible number of viewers to participate in the experience, then an unobtrusive and streamlined experience is what you want, with very focused functionality (e.g., opt in, vote for your favorite contestant, then exit).
Idea Two: Have a Compelling Viewer Value Proposition
Once you know what you want the viewer to do, you need to design an experience that meets that objective AND gives the viewer compelling value for the time they spend interacting. A weak viewer value proposition yields weak performance vs. your business goals.
Idea Three: It All Starts With a Click (No Click = No Participation)
Viewers will likely have no advance knowledge about what a particular interactive application does (or even what iTV is), or why they should care about it, so whatever is displayed on the screen to entice/enable them to start the experience is critical. I visualize the flow of viewers into an interactive application as a huge funnel with a very tiny hole in it. You want to:
1. Make the hole at the bottom of the funnel less tiny – make the prompt visible, enticing, and self-explanatory
2. Increase the “pressure” in the funnel – present a call to action that makes it obvious and compelling why viewers should interact (communicate your viewer value proposition)
3. Fill the funnel with as many potential interactors as possible – by presenting the opportunity to start the experience to as many of viewers as possible.
Idea Three: Present Many Opportunities to Opt In
Interactive experiences with more opportunities to enter them get more viewers participation. That means:
1. Present the opportunity more frequently during a given program or ad
2. Present the opportunity in multiple contexts (triggers in programs or ads as well as listings and banners in operator interactive portals)
3. Present the opportunity at multiple times of day
Tags: audience, Bill Seely, How-To, interactive experience, Interactive Television, Interactive TV, Metrics, Optimize, Performance, Practical Marketing Analytics, set-top box, TV and iTV Analytics, viewer value proposition
Statistics: the New Plastics? – Steve Lohr/NY Times
Aug 31, 2009 Industry News, Statistics
Can you “make” yourself a statistician or do you have to be a bit of an oddball to begin with?
On August 5, 2009, the Technology section of the New York Times ran an article headlined: “For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics ” In the article, author Steve Lohr cited interviews and research to declare Statistics to be the glamor career of the near future. I have been a practitioner of marketing analytics and modeling since the 1980s, and I have mixed feelings about this news: the smug sense that I was right all along about the future of business is tempered by my equally strong desire for my competition to remain sparse and disorganized.
Citing The Graduate in an article plugging a career in statistics is more than a little weird. The quoted screen conversation was meant to underscore the vapidity of a career choice based solely on what might make one a lot of money. “Plastics” was supposed to sound ridiculous:
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?
Our values as a society have changed enough since that scene ran in theaters that the exchange might now read less like a siren song for emerging sellouts, and more like sincere advice about a great career opportunity. No matter – statistics is not easy to fake an interest in. I doubt that those who might flock into a statistics course because it was a “hot” field would stay with it long enough to get a degree much less stomach it long enough to make a pot of money.
Perhaps those in the business of training statisticians will reap a windfall over the next few years if a flood of newbies rushed headlong into the field on the promise of high-paying careers. Be that as it may, I have seen too many square pegs suffer in fruitless attempts to enter this particular round hole to believe that many could “will” themselves to master statistics and analytics. Being a “quant” has a lot more to do with your innate cognitive style than your desire for a certain salary.
There is no question that business is increasingly awash in floods of data that are being under-understood and under-leveraged, and that the skills are in short supply required to extract useful meaning and patterns from data to guide decision-making and strategy.
Tags: Bill Seely, New York Times, Plastics, Practical Marketing Analytics, Statistics, Steve Lohr, The Graduate