Television has walked onto an uneven playing field, but at least it still measures true ad impressions. Joe Marchese, president of Advanced Advertising Products at Fox Networks Group (FNG), made this point and others at Re/code’s Code/Media 2016 conference in Dana Point, California, on Thursday.
When Joe’s digital advertising company, true[X], was acquired by 21st Century Fox a year ago, he thought better products and messaging were top priorities. “But really what I found out was that TV allowed itself to get into a rigged game, and it’s getting its ass handed to it because it let the digital people set the metrics,” Joe told Re/code’s senior editor for media Peter Kafka during his Code/Media session.
He went on to explain how a digital impression is measured at the start of a video ad. So when online platforms say their ads are “100 percent viewable,” it just means that the impression was viewable for a couple seconds.
“TV only has one product: 100 percent of the screen, corner-to-corner, for 30 seconds with a high likelihood that the sound is on,” Joe went on to say. “Could someone go get a sandwich? Sure. Could someone answer a phone call, read a tweet? Absolutely. But it has to be on the screen for the entirety of it. We can complain all we want about Nielsen – whether or not it’s accurate or perfect – but it’s fair.”
To read more about Joe’s Code/Media session and watch a video with some highlights, go to Re/code’s recap of his session.
