Battle of the screens

One of the key topics of the conference was ‘The Battle of the Screens’. According to Experian, those individuals who still only use one screen (i.e. their TV set) are now a minority, making up only 40% of the population. That’s not to say that the other 60% no longer watch TV on their set in the corner of the living room, rather that those 60% use other screens as well, often simultaneously, while watching a television programme. The key task for advertisers today is to manage the complexity of the multitude of screens as TV alone can’t do the job anymore.

“Brand managers have moved from leading a rock band to conducting a full orchestra,” said Geoff Seeley, global communications director at Unilever – and in this context he concedes that “brands need the help of the industry to pull everything together”. A collaborative effort clearly is the way ahead. Some of the key questions that arise from this still require solutions and currently lack conclusive answers:

• What does multi-screening mean for content consumption? How and when are other screens, such as laptops, tablets or smartphones, being used?
• How best to measure consumer behaviour in this multi-screen and multi-tasking world?
• What should advertisers do to use these opportunities effectively?

Bridging the silos

Connecting the Story is a multi-country study commissioned by the BBC (and conducted by InSites Consulting) that sheds some light on how, where, and when different screens are being used, and for what purpose.

According to Joe Hall, the BBC’s senior manager for business insights, TV remains an important platform that inspires deeper engagement with content, whereas smartphones are mainly used for a quick check of the latest headlines and tablets are beginning to draw users away from desktop or laptop access.

But measuring precisely the diverse ways audiences use different screens is a complex task and different problems have been identified and various solutions are being put forward. For a start, cross-screen identification can be difficult. As people move from one wi-fi hotspot to another (or from wi-fi to 3G) the measurement systems assume that a new device is coming online every time this happens with barely 60% of cross-identification being correct, said Doug Connelly, VP of innovation at Exponential. He proposed the use of more market mix modelling as a solution to calculate the optimum budget split across multiple screens.

Heath Podvesker, MD of MarketShare, criticised the [organisational] silos that prevent the measurement of multi-device ROI. “The marketing ecosystem is cross-media and can’t be measured in a silo but analysis of big data can help to analyse the increasing amount of information.” This, said Podvesker, will lead to better decision making, more accuracy, increased effectiveness and a better understanding between the CMO and CFO. Less politics and emotions and instead more facts – that’s where he sees the true benefit of analytics.

A future “softening of the silos” was also the plea from Pete Blackshaw, global head of digital marketing and social media at Nestlé. He sees “silo bridging” as one of the key challenges for the industry, as “all screens can play a critical role driving both brand awareness and sales”.

A plea for cross-media GRPs came from Gerhard Louw, international media manager at Deutsche Telecom “as it is a metric that our brand managers know and understand”. It is an approach that is rapidly gaining traction in the US “where there is a fever pitch to report on a single GRP across more and more fragmented platforms”, said Megan Clarken, Nielsen’s global digital product leader. Whether European markets will follow suit remains to be seen.

Manfred Mareck is an independent marketing and research consultant in London. Together with Karim Attia of nugg.ad he currently chairs the IAB Europe’s Brand Advertising Committee and represents Publicitas Digital on the IAB’s Research Committee.