Comscore's CTV survey will provide insights vital for industry growth: Alejandro Fosk

The US-based global media measurement and analytics company Comscore on Thursday announced the launch of its survey on Connected TV in order to provide holistic audience measurement to the media and advertising industry, Alejandro Fosk, Executive Vice President International (EMEA, APAC and LATAM) told e4m. 

In an exclusive interview with e4m, Fosk who is currently visiting India, explained Comscore's expanding its cross-platform capabilities in the country under their “India first” strategy. 

According to the Comscore leader, “India is by far the most important market for us in Asia Pacific. India is also the fastest growing mobile market in the globe. I am very excited about the opportunities for this market. I think we're addressing the challenges in the right way and we're fully committed to this market.” 

The company has started reaching out to clients-media buyers, publishers, TV channels, agencies among others ahead of the survey, he said. 

Notably, BARC has already announced measurement of connected TV and is currently in the process of chalking out the methodology. 

CTV survey to begin in September

The first phase of the Connective TV survey will be conducted in September-October this year. Over 4,000 interviews will be conducted for this study which will provide insights vital for industry growth, said Fosk, adding that the full fledged measurement will be launched once we receive the results of the first phase which is expected in November-December. 

He shared, “Comscore is currently measuring the CTV, but only from YouTube. India is at an earlier stage of the adoption of connected TV, but it's one of the fastest growing markets in the globe. The audiences move from traditional TV to connected devices and no one is accurately measuring that. Consumption and advertising behavior of the connected TV industry is different. So our study is basically different from the traditional approach that we have.” 

“The survey has two layers: qualitative analysis-for which we will conduct 20 to 25 in-depth interviews with decision makers, with leaders of the CTV industry where we ask in-depth questions. And then quantitative approach, where we're having 4,000 interviews across India, all age groups and all geographies asking some specific questions about CPM. With that, we get a holistic view of the status of the CTV industry in India today,” Fosk explains. 

The interviews will be conducted in September and October and the results of the study will come by November or December. Comscore plans to do this on a yearly basis later on, according to Fosk. 

“Infotainment audience not decreasing”

Fosk also spoke about Comscore’s flagship Multi-Platform suite Social Incremental-which was available only in Europe till sometime ago. It was launched in India this March. 

Social Incremental allows publishers to capture and monetize the full value of their deduplicated audiences across their entire footprint in a privacy compliant manner, says Fosk. 

“We observed that in our metrics over time the reach of the audiences on news and information was decreasing. But when you add the social component, it is a completely different story.”

According to him, “Social Incremental suite merges the two worlds, the traditional digital, which already had merged between desktop and mobile with the social measurement. So we're providing a unique view of one person across social, desktop and mobile which gives a true picture. And this is very important because most of the traditional customers have a huge social audience. And it was an unfair way to show only part of their audiences.” 

Fosk has huge expectations for the tool from the Indian market. “India is one of the largest markets in terms of media consumption. It's a very sophisticated market. And we, I believe, have solutions that are really relevant to the local market. So, we've seen the growth of social media in India, which is huge. It's not only huge in terms of the user base, but also in terms of the usage of the number of times. The time spent on social media is huge. It's like two and a half hours per day. That's the highest in the world.”

“UDM 2.0 ensures no signal loss during Cookie transition” 

Third-party signal loss is on top-of-mind for marketers as Google moves forward in 3P cookie deprecation. Advertisers are also working on the transition tool that helps them leverage first-party (1P) datasets and offset the signal loss from 3P cookies. 

Fosk says, Comscore’s Unified Digital Measurement (UDM 2.0) is designed to address the deprecation of third-party signals with the use of 1P identifiers. It integrates data sources, including first-party data and contextual signals, to provide a comprehensive view of audience behaviors without the use of 3P cookies maintaining privacy. 

Fosk explains, “It runs in parallel with third party cookies for some time for a longer time now because it has been delayed, but will allow a very smooth transition to first party cookies when third party cookies are eliminated. We have 60,000 partners in India and hence the signal will never be lost.”