There may be no bigger frustration in the media business than among TV programmers out to make sure they get a fair account of every eyeball they deliver to advertisers across screens. That's job one for my next guest, cavitaz Rani, executive vice president of Insights and Measurement in NBC Universal Accurate measurement is just the top of a list of reforms she's helping drive at the company. Tavita, thanks for coming in and talk to me. Thanks for having me.
It's nice to be here. Cool. So you've got a pretty big sort of reform agenda when it comes to the current state of measurement. Put it out there for me,
all right. So I think you know that prior to joining NBCU, I was a marketer and I was Comcast Yes, and I was responsible for a billion and a half of paid and owned media across six different brands, and every day we were focused on how is our investment helping us get subscribers to our business and so that is a passion point for me that was really important.
But the industry was coming in and saying, oh, this worked, here's the ratings we delivered, here's you know, here's the eyeballs were delivering, here's the impressions, And I always went back to, but how did it help my business? So coming to NBCU transforming that dialogue internally as well as with our clients to say we have a research we have a measurement continuum. The first thing is, yes, we do need to count impressions because that is the starting point.
It is the basis of a media plan. And in order to do that at because TV is no longer the way it used to be, we are content lives on television, the linear television screen, and it lives in digital. How do we bring that together? So counting unified impressions across digital and linear. That was job one, which was C flight, and that is you know, going to continue to evolve. We launched that with NBC Prime and so C Flight essentially is unifying impressions across unifying ad impressions
that run on linear and digital. But it's not tethered to the linear broadcast of the show. So I may be watching This is Us on a Tuesday night live or on a DVR and I'm caught up on this season, but another person might be consuming season one, episode one on digital and if an AD impression ran runs during that week, we want to be able to count the ad impressions. The consumer is that this is us watcher, the environment is the same, why shouldn't they be counted together.
So we did that with NBC Prime and Sports. Going into next year, we're going to expand it across the
portfolio and continue to UM enhance the measurements. So we're looking at how do we look at set top box v o D, how do we look at coviewing We know people watch together, how do we count all of the impressions across all screens and all platforms, and partnering with many different UM research measurement partners, so Nielsen being a core of them, but there's others that we will be talking to to build that capability because we feel really strongly that we have to make sure that the
starting point is as accurate as it can possibly be, and when that has developed, it will be open source, just like we did with C Flight. One point oh it was we met with all of our network partners, We met with our clients and agencies to go through the methodology in great detail, and we saw success from it. The marketers they for them, it was conceptually yes, why
haven't been doing this? Um for agencies, it was conceptually brought it bought in, But you still have to figure out, Okay, how do you work now with the current systems that a second You r NBC Universal, You're just one of a number of programmers out there. Why is it even to you to to lead the way here? Shouldn't you be deferring to a third party like Nielsen? Well, Nielsen is a part of it, but I think as a leader in the industry, I think we just got tired
of having everyone talk about this issue. We had to take the first step. Most of the conversations, even in my first year, was why you know why this is different, or why Nielsen has measured? Nielsen measures television this way and digital this way, And no one wanted to just take that first step. Yes, it may not be perfection, but someone had to take that first step. And I would say that the other networks are doing a form
of it, and they're trying to do it. They may not call it sea flight necessarily, but everybody is trying to figure out how do you unify impressions within television and digital? But doesn't the unification strategy need to be unified. In other words, shouldn't just be standardize you all have
the same exact approach. Yes, And I think that was part of Linda's State of the Industry, Linda Yaquarina's State of the Union last year during Thanksgiving, where she said the industry must come together, and so we bought all of the network partners. We bought all of the major networks and said this is the methodology. So I know
that you know, decisions are happening internally. You know, obviously not everyone may call it see flight, but the concept of unification of impressions is something that all I think everybody, including marketers, are taking seriously because they're trying to understand, Okay, I'm buying all this media across all of these platforms, and I have this number from one place, another number from another place. No one's make it easier for me
to understand what that is. Got it? So just one last question before we moved to yet the other things on your list of reforms. What is what are the obstacles that are preventing this from happening? Why in really isn't this already happening? Well, I think part of it is just legacy. You know, I don't know what else to call it. UM. I think it was something as a marketer we we were challenged with, is how can
we get a unified number? And at the end of the day, as a marketer, we said, okay, we'll take what every media company gives us as their number, but we're going to add our own lens. And being at Comcast, you know, we had a lot of insight into our consumer into our consumer behavior, what people are watching. So that was a you know, that's the benefit we had.
But we said, here's what we're investing, here's the media mix, and we applied very sophisticated models to understand what's the role of that mix in driving our results subscriber results. So we went, you know, we said, okay, what's the outcome that we're trying to accomplish. And that's you know, that's part of the rest of the continuum of measurement, counting to assigning credit, to measuring our O So let's go to assigning credit. What's the problem there and how
are you personally affective? Well, I, you know, I think this is something that TV has to solve. UM from a campaign measurement standpoint. You know, for the digital players, it's really really easy in terms of you see an ad, you're right at you know, whether your device or your computer, and you can click and you can take an action and that action gets recorded and there you have it. For a medium like television, it doesn't work as seamlessly.
And when you're engaged in a one hour content that's emotional and connecting with you, you may not be as likely so that consumer behavior is not as likely to pick up the phone or go to a site right away. Um, Whereas if you're watching a ten minute video of putting me how to put Makeup on and you see a makeup ad, you might be likely to click. So the
experiences are different. And um, we have to figure out how do we how do we capture the true power of television And it has to start with that closed loop. What does that closed loop look like for television? But what we don't want to do is tie it just to the moment the ad ran because television works differently. We want to be able to see the short term impact as well as the long term impact of that
ad exposure that runs on television. So what I'm trying to build across the organization is a full funnel measurement solution which consists of the stuff that we are doing in terms of measuring brand impacts. So whether you work with a Millward Brown or other partners are working directly with the advertisers to measure the brand impact in terms
of consideration, purchase intent, and those metrics. But then to take it down a level deeper and say, okay, now how do I connect the dots of advertising running and moving it to the next step? Is that demand generation in terms of site visits or or store traffic or just searches, you know, what does that look like? And then at the very end is the sales or people actually really transacting and buying a product once they get there.
So in order to do that, there are third party partnerships we can have where we can get third party sales data. You can do that for some categories, you can't do that for all categories. So this is where the partnership with the client and the advertiser becomes super critical to build that full funnel for that campaign, and that gives us a pulse of okay, how did the
campaign perform? But then to get to the next step, which is the harder work that we're doing, and it is literally in a proof of concept and building stage, is if an advertiser is spending ten million dollars with us, and they've been doing that for several years, how do we demonstrate that that that investment is working for them in terms of their business outcomes as well as give them insight into how it could work better? Are they
investing in the right areas of the platform? And can we can we start to shift to a different conversation and saying we're not going to We believe in our models so strongly and we're building enough confidence and predictive power on that in those models that we're actually willing to transact on outcomes versus age, gender, And do marketers have a say in your approach? Here? Are you sort of opening the tent to them to get their input as to I mean, because they're ultimately the people you're
trying to please. Correct. So for the proof of concept, we're building it and we're you know, my goal is to be completely transparent around that because I think you know, as a marketer, that was my pet peeve is I don't want a black box if you're doing analytics about my business. I want to understand how you're doing it to make sure you have the right context, so the same I I think our approach is going to be
the same. And at the end of the day, we're gonna need them to partner with us on providing their business outcomes. And what are those business outcomes? Are those sales?
Are those brand health? You know, help define what that is so that when we build models that are going to have that predictive power, we're measuring the right things and it's going to vary advertiser by advertisers, So you know, the solution that we're looking to build UM, we're talking about how can that be scaled because we don't want to apply what works for one advertiser in the AUTO category to all advertisers and multiple categories, because that's that's
not a UM sustainable UM and a accurate view of you know, let's say the CpG category. So and different factors affect those businesses. So in auto you might see gas prices affecting sales. In CpG, that's not as much of a factor. So we want to make sure that we build it in such a way that it is relevant to the advertiser. This all sounds horrifyingly complex and nuanced, and frankly has me asking like, are you almost chasing some sort of brass ring that can't be reached? The mirage?
In other words, are you're trying to give marketers everything they could possibly dream of wanting. Maybe there's a reason they don't have it it's impossible to get. Yeah, well you know it is. I will say it hasn't been an easy task, you know, doing you know, at at Comcast as a marketer, I had all of my data in front of me. So whether that was my sales data or how much I spent in every single tactic,
all of that was available to us. On the NBC side, we don't have everything we but we do know what we have across our portfolio, what an advertiser spends across our portfolio. So that is the starting point, um most you know, and I've I've been doing MMM models for a long time, and I want to be clear, this is not that because nothing media mixed modeling media mixed models. A lot of advertisers have their own what I call method to madness of allocating spend two different tactics and
then measuring the effectiveness of those tactics. UM. Some use MMM, some use just a Okay, last year, I spend X. This year, I'm going to spend X plus three percent UM and you know everyone has that. So it's not meant to replace that, but it is meant to help provide more insight into those UM and a lot of MMM medium mixed models don't UM go down to a very tactical level like to NBC. They may go down to a television level and a digital level, but not television and then NBC, ABC, CBS and so on and
so forth. So we're trying to create value and UM. Ultimately the proof of this is going to come from the advertisers that, Okay, if they're seeing results within their analytics in a certain way, this should be close to it, right, And that's why they're They're going to be a key part of this. What about the advertising experience in and of itself? You know, I know NBC for instances experimented
with these prime pods making a little more selective. I mean, are we going to see much more evolution on that front? How much is needed? Yes? UM, So I think that's also an industry industry problem, right, clutter exists. I mean, if you look at the digital ecosystem, there's a lot of clutter um with with what our attempt with prime pods was to really create an environment that was good for consumers right in a way that they would stay
engaged with the content longer. And we're seeing that, right. It's early, it's about it's been about six weeks of data that we're looking at, but we're seeing promising results from that. But because a consumer is more engaged, then an add that runs within that is going to perform better. And that's the hypothesis, right, that's the hypothesis, and so far we're seeing positive results in terms of how ads
are performing. What we want to continue to do is understand what is the role of the creative of an advertisers creative within that prime pod. If it is just the same old creative that they've been using for a year or so, does that have an impact on performance? And if it is a highly um emotional ad in a non emotional show, what impact does that have. So we're really trying to elevate the conversation to be not just about the prime pods itself, but also what's the
advertiser message that runs within the prime pod. Um. And so we're looking at, Okay, what shows perform better? Is it better to have it in the front of the show at the back of the show? Um? And so we're going through just digging into the deep. The data in six weeks is not enough to you know, I say, to make a trend. Um. But yeah, we are definitely
exploring on ways to just improve the consumer experience. I mean, we have a great experience on our FVP, but VP is a full episode player which is on our digital Sorry all of the internal terms, um, but you know it's a better ad experience than television. But um. But when you think about the entire ecosystem of media and fragmentation, there is clutter and it's getting harder and harder for
advertisers to really stand out. And so they're trying to invest in how do you connect on a more relevant basis, how do you, um create experiences that go beyond you know, a thirty second spot. So we're trying to just test out and expand some of those capabilities. The flip side of this is wondering about is for advertisers just the process of buying the ads, placing the ads. I assume
there's plenty of innovation to be done. There plenty of innovation, but I think, you know, the if you if you build that continuum of measurement in the right way, a lot of that could happen ahead of time in terms of planning the most optimal media by across our portfolio.
And then it is a matter of just sitting down with advertisers and yes, there's a little bit of you know, the work that advertisers have to do to retool how they think about creative and there's a lot of work that we have to do on our end to make sure that we have the right data capabilities, the AI to help with those well with those processes and making them making them easier. So there's a lot of big plans, a lot of big changes. I'm just curious how concrete
they are. In other words, do you have some sort of roadmap of here's what the next ten years of change looks like? I do in my head almost soon enough. But you know, I think we'll be coming out with more of that in the next next few months. I mean, I think part of the problem we're sorry the opportunity, the challenge is that you're trying to reform something that from a broad business perspective is still in such a state of flux. You're it's like changing the tires while
the car is being modeled beyond running. It's like like the pit crew at NASCAR. Yes, yes, so, and apologies if you guys don't have rights to Nascar. But has that been something that has figured into the challenge here where it's like you think you've got something figured out, it's like, oh wait, that's that already just changed? Yeah? Um, you know that's the innovator's dilemma, right, you have to keep the current machine running because you we all have
revenue to targets to hit. But how do we continue to focus on innovation and pushing that agenda? Um, I think we have no choice but to push that agenda because marketers are demanding so much more from us in terms of you know, yes, we know you have great shows, but what is it doing to deliver on results for me? So well? Have we have to do it? We just I think as an industry, we just have to do it.
And we're bringing agencies along in that process because I think agencies are also under the same pressure that UM that marketers are under to drive impact, and so we keep you know, the internal mantra is around. We want to shift from counting impressions to delivering impact, and so we just keep saying that. When there's a roadblock in a measurement solution or technology, or we can't get resources, we just keep saying, this is our this is our vision.
We've got to get there. Well, it sounds like you've got a very busy ahead of you. We'll have to check back in at the end of the year then, and and and see how far you've come. Thanks for you, Thank you for having me. It was really fun. This has been another episode of Strictly Business. Tune in next week for another helping a scintillating conversation with media movers and shakers, and please make sure you subscribe to the
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