As the annual TV advertising upfront market season approaches, discussions around the future of measurement in the streaming and connected TV (CTV) era are rapidly heating up. Since Nielsen lost key accreditation due to errors (which it has since regained), alternative measurement vendors and streaming companies have been actively driving market competition and forward-looking solutions.

The Joint Industry Committee (JIC), formed last year by national TV programmers, major media agencies, streaming platforms, and other industry players, has quickly advanced the implementation of measurement solutions. This month, the organization announced that Comscore and VideoAmp have receivedaccreditation as tradable national currencies, a key step in establishing and evaluating measurement standards.

On April 3, at the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) summit, the CEOs of the so-called "Big Four" currency-grade measurement vendors—Comscore, VideoAmp, Nielsen, and iSpot—shared their views on the current state and future trends of the industry.

"This is not 'change is coming': change is here." said Peter Liguori, Executive Chairman of VideoAmp, whose company provides measurement and currency services for 98% of the TV landscape. "It's here, it's now, and it's accelerating."

Innovation and Evolution

During the CIMM East panel discussion, executives showcased both the substantial work already accomplished and the future potential, especially if measurement companies continue to innovate and differentiate.

"We went through decades of sameness, no innovation, no competition. Now competition has arrived," Liguori said, in an apparent jab at Nielsen, which once monopolized the market. "Funding is being unlocked to drive the innovation the industry needs."

These innovations include the development of cross-screen measurement, enabling marketers to allocate investments more efficiently between linear TV and streaming. iSpot founder and CEO Sean Muller explained that cross-screen measurement is expected to remain a top priority for brands, not only during this year's upfronts but also as the TV advertising market continues to evolve.

"I think, overall, upfronts will get smaller over time, and scatter will get bigger, and a lot of scatter inventory will likely end up being sold by programmatic platforms like The Trade Desk," Muller said. "A real shift is happening, and it's happening faster than people realize, so the whole market will look very different in a few years."

This year's upfronts are likely to feel the impact of the measurement progress over the past year. The JIC and MRC haveclarified the differences in their complementary roles, and as the industry shifts from using broad demographics and gross rating points to impression-based transactions, it has become clearer which currencies have transparent methodologies. But the process is still ongoing.

"Looking back a year ago, we've come a long way, but there's still a lot of work to do," said Comscore CEO Jon Carpenter. "There's still a lot of friction in the transaction systems between buyers and sellers that needs to be cleaned up to enable trading on currencies other than Nielsen."

Big Data and/or Panels

Although several panelists directly or indirectly criticized Nielsen, the atmosphere was more subdued than at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's annual leadership meeting in January, where these executives shared the stage, noted moderator Jon Watts, Managing Director of CIMM. At that meeting, Liguori and Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao clashed over their respective companies' capitalization challenges and panel status, with Liguori at the time calling panels "dead as a doornail." This time, Liguori emphasized VideoAmp's approach of "big data with panels, not panels with big data," a shift echoed by other panelists.

"I think panels are going from being the main character to a supporting character," Muller said, noting that iSpot is amajor investor。

in panel startup TVision. Muller explained that big data is superior to panels for understanding and deduplicating households and devices reached by ads and content; but panels remain superior to big data for determining who in a household is watching. Therefore, iSpot uses panels as training sets for AI models applied to big data to determine viewership. Similarly, Comscore, a pioneer of the big data approach, invests "tens of millions of dollars" annually in panels and uses semantic web crawlers to extract contextual signals from its publisher integrations, Carpenter said.

"For the past 25 years, we've been combining big data with panels," the Comscore executive said. "We don't see it as an either/or—no single solution can solve today's measurement challenges."

Unsurprisingly, Nielsen's Rao offered a more direct defense of his company's core methodology of many years, even as Nielsen also invests and advances in the big data space.

"Devices and big data do not equal people. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it's true," he said, noting that big data may undercount Hispanic and Black audiences. "Over time, the focus and biases may change, but today, panels are essential for measuring all audiences and representing the entire population."

Winners and Losers

Regardless of which combination and approach of big data and panels prevails, the measurement landscape will remain in flux. Of the seven measurement companies invited to participate in the JIC process last year, only Comscore and VideoAmp received accreditation, iSpot received conditional accreditation, with a final decision due in June. Further market consolidation remains possible.

"Having four participants sitting here, a lot of money has been invested, and now it's up to the industry to reward innovation and disruptors to ensure that next year this is still a panel discussion rather than a fireside chat," said VideoAmp's Liguori.

Innovation and disruption are costly, with rising expenses for serving clients, building panels, and purchasing and processing data. Comscore's Carpenter believes that for the companies on the CIMM panel, streamlining operations and delivering best-in-class products and solutions is the only way forward.

"Frankly, this space will continue to consolidate. There isn't enough money to support more than four measurement companies coexisting," he said. "The key is who has the solutions that meet today's market needs—omnichannel and cross-platform."

As with all economic questions, marketers ultimately need to weigh measurement costs against outcome benefits. For example, according to Liguori, VideoAmp helped Pepsi increase reach by 20%, reduce CPM by about 10%, and drive double-digit sales growth, demonstrating the value measurement vendors must prove to survive.

"Are you a cost center or a revenue engine?" he said. "You'll make economic decisions based on cost and measurement, or based on the only outcome that matters—sales."