Kantar, the world’s leading data, insights and consulting company, today announces a major milestone in its roadmap to deliver the advertising industry’s most advanced independent platform for measuring advertising effectiveness. Project Moonshot is the first advertising industry initiative to establish direct data integrations with companies including Google, Pandora and fast-rising in-game ad platform Anzu, to assess the impact of advertising on brand and sales.
Also being announced today are cookie-less measurement partnerships including Dish, Pinterest, Roku, Snap, Spotify and Twitter. Kantar now has operational partnerships or is in advanced testing with 9 of the top 10 digital publishers and 15 of the top 20 apps and is in advanced onboarding discussions with more than 50 other publishers. The goal is to represent 95% of global digital ad spend by integrating 250 publishers into cross-publisher measurement on the platform by the end of 2021.
Moonshot was established to achieve three industry-wide goals:
- Establish privacy compliant, next-generation data and technology platform to migrate industry from cookie-based measurement to direct publisher integrations
- Independent ad effectiveness measurement of individual publishers and media companies
- Independent ad effectiveness measurement across all publishers within a media plan including polling solutions for walled garden environments and cross-publisher campaigns.
Holistic, consistent and transparent measurement of advertising effectiveness across all platforms, including social media platforms and walled gardens, is identified as a major challenge by 75% of the world’s biggest advertisers1.
Kantar’s research indicates that 80% of marketers trust third party measurement, compared to just over 40% who trust data from individual publisher or media platforms. ‘Getting Media Right’ also identified important priorities for advertisers include the need to prove ROI, attribute brand and sales impact to the right channels and the ability to optimise throughout campaigns.
Until now, advertisers and media agencies have been able to measure the effectiveness of their online advertising with many publishers, except the walled gardens, using tracking cookies. With the disappearance of the third-party cookie, Kantar has developed new ways to assess effectiveness, using a combination of methodologies including direct integrations and extensively validated probabilistic measurement, heralding a new era for cross-publisher effectiveness. Project Moonshot provides publishers with two cookie-less and privacy-compliant methodologies to deploy measurement and tracking. Both methodologies have at their core Kantar’s permission-based and privacy-compliant Profiles Network of 100 million consumers globally.
Jane Ostler, Kantar’s global leader for Advertising Effectiveness, commented ”As digital grows, it’s even more important that publishers can defend their ad revenues with an independent view of performance for advertisers. The gradual removal of third-party cookies from the digital landscape means that methods of online ad effectiveness tracking need to evolve, in a privacy-compliant way. We know that advertisers would ideally like cross-publisher ad effectiveness measurement, and Kantar’s Project Moonshot is making giant steps in that direction.”
Ms Ostler continued “The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis will inevitably have an impact on advertising spending around the world. We have seen from our own research though that consumers still value well placed, and thoughtful advertising even in a time of crisis. As we begin to emerge from the crisis and move towards recovery, the advertising and creative industries can play an invaluable role in accelerating the recovery, however, advertising departments will be under pressure as never before to prove the value of every £/$/€/¥/₡ they spend. Moonshot is creating the infrastructure to make that possible.”
Commentary from our partners:
Roku
“Our direct partnership with Kantar is focused on making TV ads more targeted and measurable,” said Gaurav Shirole, Director, Ad Measurement, Roku. “As we enter the streaming decade, platforms like OneView built on a consumer connection are designed to best help advertisers shift spend to streaming.”
Anzu
“Project Moonshot represents a watershed moment in our industry--one in which tools, services, and platforms are integrating for the first time, offering advertisers unprecedented insights. At Anzu, we breathe innovation--that has been our culture and approach to technology and partnerships from day one. We're thrilled to join forces with Project Moonshot as the first collaboration to bring this innovation, as well as Kantar's world-renowned data and insights, to the in-game advertising space. Most of all, we're excited to empower advertisers to leverage the growing audiences of 2.7 billion worldwide gamers with more confidence than ever before,” said Itamar Benedy, Co-founder and CEO of Anzu.
Mediacom
Nick Lawson, Global CEO, MediaCom, adds: “Measurement is going through a revolution and with ever increasing investment in digital channels, we need to be prepared for the change that the end of cookie data is going to bring. Kantar’s Project Moonshot initiative, and its work with publishers, ensures that we can continue to plan smarter and rely on data to deliver insights into consumer behaviour. Having a consistent method of measuring brand effectiveness across digital platforms, and being able to link our messages to sales and consumer impact as part of the bigger picture, is exactly what MediaCom, and indeed the entire industry, needs.”
Notes to editors:
Sources: 1 - Getting Media Right
Today’s announcement builds on an unrivalled pedigree in the media industry. Kantar helps clients navigate media decision to grow great brands. To date, Kantar has utilised its digital panel of over 25 million respondents to conduct:
- Effectiveness measurement of over 20,000 digital campaigns
- Effectiveness measurement of over 2,000 cross media campaigns
- Over 700 Connect touchpoint planning studies
- 500 digital pilot studies utilising Context Lab – an AI-based tool that measures effectiveness of adverts in different environments.
- Over 200,000 Link ad tests.
The progress on creating an industry-standard for ad effectiveness builds on Kantar’s global reputation as a proven independent third-party provider of ‘currency-grade’ measurement. Kantar already provides ‘currency-grade’ data in:
- Measurement of advertising spend, tracking 96% of all ad spend globally.
- TV ratings in more than 50 countries, including real-time ratings in Brazil, Argentina, and across Latin America.
- The global FMCG/CPG industry with grocery market share in 45 countries, including daily data in some countries and total retail spend’ market share in the UK thanks to the recent Worldpanel+ launch. Worldpanel+ capabilities extending to China, Brazil and France next.
- The provider of national and supra-national-level statics for Governments and Administrations around the world.