Frankfurt, September 10, 2020. For the first time, AGF Videoforschung is presenting the results from its “Follow the Campaign”-project – with Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings. With Follow the Campaign, working with Nielsen, advertisers and agencies, AGF measures the ex post crossmedia campaign reach of video advertising. Over 20 campaigns have now been measured in the project, many more than were planned at the start in 2019.
“Our goal with this project was to meet a basic market requirement for information on crossmedia campaign reaches. We’re gratified by the thoroughly positive response and support for the project from advertisers and agencies,” said Kerstin Niederauer-Kopf, CEO of AGF Videoforschung. “It shows that with “Follow the Campaign” (FTC) we are meeting a basic need of the market.” The method used makes it possible for the first time to measure how many net contacts a campaign reaches across all relevant video channels. Advertisers can evaluate the results not just at the marketer level, but also at the spot level. That means that the contribution of a given channel to the overall campaign result can be measured individually.
AGF discussed the results, plans and challenges for Follow the Campaign in the 2nd episode of the video series AGF Viewtime on viewtime.agf.de. The episode featured as guests Norman Wagner (Head of Group Media Deutsche Telekom), Guido Modenbach (Executive Vice President Research, Analytics & Consulting SevenOne Entertainment Group), Sascha Jansen (Chief Digital Officer Omnicom Media Group) and Matt O’Grady (Global Commercial President Nielsen Media), the latter two by live video link. Nielsen developed the Digital Ad Ratings method for measuring digital campaigns, which AGF further refined for fusion with TV.
In this AGF Viewtime episode AGF presented for the first time its results for fusioned online video and TV data, using the Telekom campaign “Make The Best Of The Best Network” as an example. The Telekom campaign started in the middle of the corona lockdown in early April 2020, and according to Follow the Campaign within four weeks it had reached some 40 million people aged 21 to 64, or almost 85 percent of this target group. Around 85 percent of the gross reach was obtained with TV and 15 percent with online video, especially Facebook and YouTube. “With Follow the Campaign, what were previously theories and models are transformed into facts that we can use for campaign planning,” said Norman Wagner, Head of Group Media at Deutsche Telekom.
In contact class 6+, which is particularly important for a campaign of this nature, almost 95 percent came from TV and mixed TV/online contacts. The majority of the mixed contacts were TV-induced. Just five percent came from online. Wagner considers this noteworthy, because for advertisers mixed contacts are what makes the difference in effectiveness. “What surprised us was the structure of the effective reach. We saw that starting early on, digital made almost no further contribution, because the ecosystem is not set up for effective reach,” Wagner noted. Just ten days after campaign launch the average contacts increased only through TV advertising.
Guido Modenbach, EVP Research, Analytics & Consulting SevenOne Entertainment Group, emphasized the significance of Follow the Campaign for optimizing media planning. “For the first time, we’ll have a picture of these issues, and may possibly change the way we plan TV and video,” said Modenbach.
Norman Wagner sees a lot of potential for the approach: “Guaranteed” it will influence media planning.
Sascha Jansen, Chief Digital Officer at Omnicom Media Group, is in favour of a neutral party like AGF doing the crossmedia reach measuring. “An industry without industry standards won’t get far. There definitely needs to be a standard. This can only come from a JIC like AGF,” he said. But Jansen made it clear that on the buy side, namely media agencies and advertisers, the focus is on “evaluating investments and not at all the marketing aspects of individual categories.”
Modenbach and Wagner also have things they expect from the project, which is still in the pilot phase. Wagner wants an extension of the approach to include other target groups. Currently the tool that Follow the Campaign is based on, the Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings (DAR), permits only sociodemographic target group breakdown. In Wagner’s view that is no longer enough. “We’re tending to see sociodemographics as less and less relevant,” he said.
Modenbach would welcome DAR using less modelled data. “I’d like Nielsen to think about opening up and addressing this concept with other data partners, to reduce the proportion of modelled target groups,” he said.
The ruling on cookie use handed down by Germany’s Federal Supreme Court, as well as browser-based limitations on the use of cookies, such as on Google’s Ads Data Hub, present special challenges for the future measurement of Follow the Campaign. These developments also impact the Nielsen DAR. “We’re ready for the cookie-free future. Our job is to make sure that measurement remains consistent and independent, and that there continues to be deduplicated reach,” stated Matt O’Grady, Global Commercial President at Nielsen Media, in a video interview. In his view, AGF’s Follow the Campaign approach shows the way forward and “is exactly what the market needs.”
When Follow the Campaign goes into regular use will depend on how quickly Nielsen can solve the current challenges. AGF CEO Kerstin Niederauer-Kopf intends to continuously refine the project and bring important KPIs like viewthrough rate and viewability into the data picture for all marketers and advertising forms. However, this requires willingness on the part of the marketers. Further steps are expansion of measurement approach to other forms of advertising like addressable ads and switch-ins. Plans also call for enriching the pilot project with single-source data from router measurement in AGF’s own panel. The AGF Smart Meter technology presented in mid-July, which AGF is currently rolling out in AGF Panel households together with its service provider GfK, also enables the passive measurement of providers who are not actively involved in AGF measurement.
The entire discussion is viewable at viewtime.agf.de.
About AGF Viewtime
In AGF Viewtime AGF presents current and important projects, and provides a forum for advertisers, agencies, video providers and other experts to be heard.
About AGF Videoforschung GmbH (www.agf.de)
AGF Videoforschung GmbH specializes in impartial video research. AGF continuously tracks the use of video content in Germany on a quantitative basis and analyzes the data collected. It invests many millions of euros per year to continuously refine its instruments in order to deliver reliable data on the use of video content to the market on a daily basis. AGF consults closely with all market partners, including licensed TV stations, advertisers and media agencies.
Press contact:
Juliane Paperlein
Head of Corporate Communication | AGF Videoforschung GmbH |
T +49 69 955 260-55 |