#ARFAM8 : What Measurement of the Future Looks Like

By David Brudenell

“Consumers are ahead of us.” Laura Desmond opened with in her presentation on What Measurement of the Future Looks like. Offering a welcome delivery of a well designed presentation (we all know that Researchers are the worst PPT fail culprits), Desmond built a story of how manufacturers are “actively developing household devices with screens that will communicate with each other” to “better drive consideration” for advertisers.

Desmond went on to share her focus on convergence and Starcom’s focus on the interaction of consumers between devices. The challenge, Desmond goes on to say is that yesterday’s measurement models have focused on the “what of channels” which are highly silo-ed. The future through the Starcom lens is to create measurement that focuses on the “how and the why” – how do consumers go across channels and why do they make these jumps between devises. This, she says is the ‘cool new deal’ and ‘unlocks the Holy Grail of measurement”.

How do we unlock the convergence area? Desmond promoted three ideas:

1. Accelerate innovation through partnership

2. Invest in new measurement for brands

3. Understand how experiences create data