PremiumAs a consumer, you want to be understood without giving away your privacy, and I think this is one of the things we do uniquely well, Kenny said
MUMBAI : In a changing world of advertising with several touch points and much overlapping, companies that study consumer behaviour when it comes to advertising also need to be more agile, said David Kenny, chairman and chief executive of Nielsen, which works in audience insights, data and analytics spaces and measures audiences across TV, digital, radio, and other media. During his first visit to India after the pandemic, Kenny said India is not only a priority market for the company but is also a test market where it can build models which can work across various countries. The measurement paradigm will become even more accurate with connected TVs, Kenny said in an interview. Edited excerpts:
Will you agree that a lot of the money spent on advertising is actually being wasted globally?
That is why there is a need for measurement. Our purpose is to power a better media future for all people, and that is not just better advertising currency. This is because the media plays such an important role in education, in uniting society and in creating common values. So, we do think it’s important that we have a base measure of who saw the messages and how often they see them, all the way down to the programme level so that (marketers are) creating programming that the consumer responds to and trusts.
The whole global media system, the news and information, the sports, the entertainment, and the advertising, are all based on principles of trust. So, it’s a huge responsibility for us to have a very high standard to make sure everything is operated that way to make sure that there is no bias in our data and that all people are represented in the numbers.
The entire consumer journey now has many touch points unlike earlier when it was just traditional media—TV and print. Is there a lot of waste because of the overlapping in advertisements?
We have to measure across (mediums) to make sure that ultimately, we do the people-level measurement, commonly. So, part of what we’re getting to with Nielsen is to measure the reach of impressions and the frequency of impressions, regardless of what signal they came, because we need to know whether we reached a person the right number of times—not too many, not too few. And then how many people like this person we reached. And we don’t care whether that was on a broadcast signal or a cable signal or a connected TV signal... just that we reached that person.
And does that serve the advertiser better?
Of course. But it also serves the consumer well. It’s not a great consumer experience if you have too much frequency of the same message. As a consumer, you want to be understood without giving away your privacy, and I think this is one of the things that we do uniquely well.
So what is the right frequency of a message?
You have to test your way into that. It varies by category. To be honest, there’s no right answer, but I will say that one of the big challenges with unmeasured digital (advertising) is that if you’re only measuring impressions, we all know that there’s too much frequency (of that) and it almost has a negative brand impression. Because if you feel like you’re being hunted by a brand because you see the same ad over and over again, it’s a challenge. So, I’d say the right frequency is when the consumer finds the message valuable, not annoying.
Is that a marketer’s biggest challenge?
Frequency capping is a really important challenge. I think that marketers, the smart marketers we’re working with, are very focused on building and sustaining trust. And trust is about the right message in the right place. Because if it’s too frequent, it almost seems like you’re stalking, and that makes people nervous. So, getting that right is key.
How significant is connected TV in the Indian context, given its limited reach?
Connected TV is going to be very important. We’ve already seen consumption catching up, and also that the connected TV players here have started conversations with us to embark on measurement. I think it’s just a matter of time; we should add measurements on the connected TV sometime soon.
How important is India as a market from the advertising potential?
It’s still a very robust ad market though it’s growing. I think you have such an enormous and diverse population—economically, geographically, and ethnically—that there’s work to be done to reach it well, but it’s worth it to figure it out. I’m excited about the growth of local Indian brands because I don’t think building the market just on global brands is going to make it strong enough.
I see the strength of great products being made here and great innovation being done locally, which is terrific. Yes, there’s been a bit of a slowdown with the global tech companies, which were big employers here, and while that’s tough in the short run, I actually think it’s good because it means more people will be working for local Indian companies and I think that strong advertising, marketing, the consumer-based economy requires a combination of local and global brands. And that’s certainly a really exciting time.
There have been so many good policies in place in India to encourage innovation. There’s such talent here. Having that work in a combination of local and global companies. I think it’s gonna be really good.