Friday, August 15, 2025

Inputs Vs. Outputs, And Nielsen's New 'Outcomes Marketplace'

 

Commentary

Inputs Vs. Outputs, And Nielsen's New 'Outcomes Marketplace'

More than a century after Arthur C. Nielsen launched a company to measure media exposure to consumers -- and increasingly, how it affects them -- his namesake company is once again elevating the role of outputs in its products and services to advertisers, launching what it is dubbing an "Outcomes Marketplace" that will combine Nielsen's proprietary data with those of other marketing and media researchers to offer advertisers and agencies with "a more comprehensive view of an ad’s outcome alongside reach and frequency data."

The move obviously has implications for media planners and buyers, as well as their clients, but it also raises new questions about what the inputs and outputs of media measurement actually are.

The move comes a week after a former division of private equity-owned Nielsen that explicitly measured outputs like sales lift and conversions -- Nielsen IQ, now NIQ -- began trading as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange, reminding me of a long history of the companies' split-ups, reintegrations, private and public offerings over the century of their existence.


Company historical footnotes aside, Nielsen's announcement this morning raises additional questions about what media measurement inputs are vs. outcomes, announcing that its first third-party Outcomes Marketplace partner is Realeyes, a company known for measuring the attention consumers pay to media and advertising.

In the brief modern history of ad industry outcomes measurement standards -- the Media Rating Council's September 2022 "Outcomes and Data Quality Standards," attention metrics are not listed as "measurement of delivery and exposure," not outcomes, which the MRC standards describe as things like lead generation, requests for information, sales lift, brand lift, conversions, etc.

To that end, Nielsen executives say the outcome measurement portion of the Realeyes partnership will come from pairing Realeyes' data with Nielsen's own, proprietary snapshots of brand and sales outcomes metrics in the marketplace.

What's not clear from this morning's announcement is whether future Outcomes Marketplace offerings will be generating outcome metrics solely from Nielsen's data, or from the other third parties it is partnering with.

Nielsen has not disclosed other Outcome Marketplace partner plans, but its announcement this morning does include a quote from Krishna Subramanian, the CEO of influencer marketing platform Captiv8, which big agency holding company Publicis acquired earlier this year.

"Nielsen’s attention metrics raise the bar for influencer marketing," Subramanian says, adding, "We’ve always pushed for deeper, more meaningful measurement and now we can go beyond surface-level metrics to show real campaign impact."

Nielsen's move also comes as big agency holding companies like Omnicom, WPP, Publicis and others have been investing deeply in their own, proprietary outcomes-based measurement data, especially Omnicom's big acquisition of Flywheel a couple of years ago, indicating that from their point-of-view, the future of planning and buying is more about owning elite outcome data sets than licensing it from others.

That said, Nielsen says its new Outcomes Marketplace will "announce more best in class outcomes measurement providers later this year that will deliver metrics across the full spectrum of campaign performance, including ad engagement, audience attention, brand perception shifts, and sales conversions."

I look forward to covering those, as well as any new outcomes measurement deals, products and services coming from other industry suppliers. Maybe even NIQ?

In Pod We Trust, Nielsen Fuses Edison Data into Media Planning

 

Commentary

In Pod We Trust, Nielsen Fuses Edison Data into Media Planning

It's been nearly a dozen years since Nielsen acquired radio audience measurement service Arbitron, and rebranded it as "Nielsen Audio," and a lot has changed in both the audio media and how it is measured, including a long pattern of collaboration between Nielsen and another highly-regarded, independent research entity Edison Research.

To illustrate that point, Nielsen and Edison this morning unveiled yet another new collaborative product, the "Nielsen Podcast Fusion powered by Edison Research."

For those planners and buyers who are not technically-inclined bout media audience measurement methodologies, a fusion is a method in which two different survey-based research suppliers integrate their data at a fundamental level -- usually by "hooking" the common attributes of respondents in their separate surveys to extrapolate how respondents in one survey correlated to the characteristics of respondents in the other.


If that sounds like a leap of faith, it is generally considered a sound media research method, if done right. And we have to assume that companies like Nielsen and Edison wouldn't do something that's not right.

Also, keep in mind we are now entering a world in which far less sound methods -- including synthetic, AI-generated respondents are not posing as actual consumers to yield fast, hard-to-get responses. More on that another time.

As far as the new Nielsen/Edison fusion goes, it's hard to understand what explicitly is under the hood based on this morning's announcement, but at least two pedigree podcast media companies -- NPR and Ocean Media -- have signed on as charter subscribers, so that says something.

Beyond that, the companies say the new collaboration will fuse Edison's "Podcast Metrics" database with Nielsen's "Media Impact" media planning tool, so at the very least, it shouldn't be a heavy lift or big learning curve for planners and buyers already familiar with using that. It will just include a new, ostensibly better source of information about actual podcast listenership.

Among other things, that fusion will enable advertisers and agencies to compare and plan podcast alongside TV, radio, digital and social media buys, making for a more holistic process than dabbling across disparate databases.

According to this morning's announcement, that's an important development because podcasts now account for nearly a third (32%) of the entire ad-supported audio marketplace.

For background, this is not Nielsen's and Edison's first rodeo together.

Nielsen already markets Edison's "Share of Ear" and "Podcast Metrics" reports and the two companies publish the quarterly "The Record" report.

Targeting Not Segmentation

 

Commentary

Targeting Not Segmentation

From all my years in research and consulting, I think I’ve learned a thing or two about marketing worth sharing. Enduring fundamentals, mostly—yet often overlooked. So, over the course of my biweekly column this year, I want to share some snippets for your consideration. I hope they’re helpful.

This week’s thought: It’s all about targeting not segmentation.

*   *   *

Segmentation has become controversial again. While most marketers see segmentation as the foundation of proper marketing, a growing number think it needs to be reined in. Some feel it has outlived its usefulness. A few believe it was always mistaken.

But I think this whole debate misses the point. Because what makes marketing work is targeting not segmentation. The two ideas have become conflated—the former is an element of strategy; the latter is a sort of tactic or tool.


Those who feel segmentation is past its use-by date point to the supply chain snarls following COVID as the turning point. It was hard enough getting one variety to market, much less several. So, companies shrunk varieties, even brands, of foods, beverages, toys, furniture, HBAs, household goods and more. (Alas, my favorite soft drink, Tab, disappeared during this downsizing.) As a share of general merchandise, new products now account for less than half of what they did pre-pandemic.

Fewer varieties mean demand is more aggregated, thus less segmented. Yet, despite this, consumer spending and marketing effectiveness are as strong as ever. Leading critics to question the value of all the segmentation that has now been cast off.

Some company leaders have been talking as if this world of less variety is here to stay. Macy’s CEO explained its post-COVID simplification by saying, “The consumer today does not want an endless aisle.” Newell’s CEO echoed this sentiment: “I don’t think any consumer would have noticed we went from 200 to 150” Yankee Candles.

There seems to be little payoff for limitless variety and personalization. For one thing, operational execution is hard. Even in our digital, data-rich age, marketers have struggled to deliver affordable and compelling one-to-one personalized experiences and offerings. For another thing, the consumer appeal of obscure varieties is doubtful. Research has found no support for the long tail theory popularized by tech writer Chris Anderson.

It took the pandemic to lay bare the problematic economics of micro-segmentation, but when it did, the wheel turned.

Skinnying down feels like walking away from segmentation. But that’s not the case. The answer to too much variety is not too little. We are not headed back to Henry Ford’s Model T maxim—any color as long as it’s black. Retailers also cut SKU’s after the financial crisis, most notably Walmart. Two years into it, Walmart reversed course, realizing it had cut too close to the bone.

Skinnying down is a return to what’s really important—targeting. Marketing is not about segmentation per se. If it takes multiple options for every consumer to find a good fit, then segmentation is needed for proper marketing. But if one option is a good fit for everybody, then no segmentation is needed, and that’s proper marketing. One is often plenty.

The measure of success is targeting, not the psychological or needs-state coherence of segments. Which is to say that many times, marketers rely on the statistical fit of segmentation solutions rather than the targeting fit of offerings to determine marketing strategy.

Segmentation arose from pioneering work in the first half of the 20th century by Wroe Alderson, the all-but-forgotten founding father of marketing science. Attitude segmentation more specifically was developed by Russ Haley at Grey in the early sixties. These ideas became consensus thinking through Northwestern professor Philip Kotler’s highly influential Marketing Management textbook, first published in 1967, that for decades has instructed aspiring business leaders that segmentation is the fundamental strategic building block of proper marketing.

Not without dissent, though. Larry Gibson, research head at General Mills for two decades, long argued that segmentation was an inefficient heuristic construct not an actual market feature. In other words, just a tool for executing targeting. Gibson felt that the “radical heterogeneity” of preferences made choice modeling a better analytic tool for targeting.

Other dissent centered on the necessity of segmentation to deliver above average returns. A seldom recognized yet critical implication of segmentation theory is that the financial viability of a segmentation approach requires higher returns among targeted segments.

Dividing the market into segments walls off certain segments from consideration and attention—they are ignored in favor of higher prospect segments. This narrows the universe of opportunity for a brand, and in this smaller market, a brand must grow more strongly in order to make up the foregone potential of the rest of the market.

In other words, if targeted segments are not more responsive or more loyal, what’s the point? A brand can get the same results without segmentation. And the greater responsiveness or loyalty can’t be just a little bit higher. It must be a lot higher—high enough to more than make up for the lost sales to non-targeted segments and high enough to cover the additional costs of segmented media buys.

These sorts of questions spawned an outpouring of business theorists who preached the higher returns of highly segmented marketing. Like Tom Peters with his focus on service, and Seth Godin with his focus on permission, and Don Peppers and Martha Rogers with their focus on personalization. These views were widely accepted during the eighties and nineties until a more exacting scrutiny of segmentation was articulated around the turn of the century by Byron Sharp, director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.

In 2005, Sharp published How Brands Grow, in which he pounced on the one-to-one objective of loyalty by showing that growth comes from more, not more loyal, customers. By Sharp’s account, the narrowing of market potential that is inherent to segmentation makes no sense—higher returns among targeted segments are a mirage and cutting a brand off from potential customers in non-targeted segments is self-defeating.

In 2018, Sharp published a textbook of his own that teaches mass marketing not segmentation. Because says Sharp, segmentation is constrictive, thus “anti-scale and…anti-growth.”

Sharp’s critiques in combination with pandemic-driven simplification make it seem as if a post-segmentation era is at hand. Hold your horses.

It’s not about segmentation. It’s about targeting. It’s never about segmenting or not. It’s about better or worse targeting. If segmentation is what it takes, then there’s no debate. And vice versa.

Note that targeting is really a matter of finance not marketing. The business objective is the bottom-line, so the best target is the most profitable. This is not identical with the segmentation purpose of a perfect fit. The business objective is the most profit and that might mean—indeed, usually means—merely a good enough fit.

The only justification for taking a segmented approach for customer fit is that it is the most profitable strategy for targeting. If the most profitable targeting strategy is not to segment, then segmentation is a distraction. Sharp would argue that this is what happened during the heyday of loyalty pundits (albeit his financial metric is topline rather than profit).

The value of Sharp’s critique is the reminder to focus on targeting not segmentation. And when we do, we see that Sharp draws the wrong conclusion about marketing. Because he, too, lets segmentation get in the way of his thinking about targeting.

There is nothing ‘mass’ in marketing any longer. The marketplace has fractured. Difference and division abound: Demographics. Localism. Gender. Race. Ethnicity. Family structure. Living arrangements. Income. Social media. Politics. Generations. Even work-from-home.

The prerequisite for mass marketing is finding “bigger commonalities,” to quote Sharp. The related psychological principle is that people want to belong and share allegiance with something bigger, not be divided into smaller, often warring, camps. But this is precisely the problem. In a marketplace of increasingly radical heterogeneity (echoing Gibson), looking for persuasive and attractive commonalities is quixotic. Increasingly, belonging is found, even if paradoxically, in smaller groups.

What the future demands is a diversity of targeting. Even segmentation can come up short on this. More often than not, segmentation work is done to identify the single target with the most potential and deliver only against that one target, not to find ways to appeal to many targets at once. Which is an ironic hitch in the whole approach—it is embracing an analytics of difference in order to practice a marketing of singularity. Which is exactly what mass marketing is—a marketing of singularity. In today’s fractured marketplace, singularly is a defect, and a defect common to both sides of the segmentation debate. So, each side of the segmentation debate winds up with a type of targeting unsuited for the future.

Brands need to master master granularity, not try to traffic in commonalities that aren’t there. Getting big has always required amassing customers of many sorts. Segmentation has tended to overlook this, but critics has over-simplified the solution.

Brands get big with a quilt that stitches together diverse, dissimilar customers, each with a unique connection to a brand, even though they may have little in common with other customers. Big brands do not gloss over differences or mash up consumers into a force-fit of uniformity. Rather, they double down on making distinctive connections. This is exactly what makes marketing hard. But getting started is easy—it’s all about targeting not segmentation.

Nexstar-Tegna: FCC Bringing Good Vibes to Hard-Pressed TV Stations Soon?

 

Nexstar-Tegna: FCC Bringing Good Vibes to Hard-Pressed TV Stations Soon?

Two big, independent TV stations are in advanced talks to merge: Nexstar Media Group is looking to strike a deal to buy Tegna, with the value of the deal estimated at around $2.5 billion, according to reports.

This comes as new leadership from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has started the process of stripping away certain federal rules around TV station ownership.

In their sights: The max rule of TV station ownership that limits companies from owning TV stations that collectively reach more than 39% of U.S. TV households.

Nexstar is already the largest U.S. TV station operator, owning (or partnered) with more than 200 stations.

Tegna, the fourth-largest owner of U.S. TV stations, owns 64 TV stations in 51 U.S. markets.


For years, TV stations have been under financial stress to grow their business as traditional core local TV station advertising revenues have become weaker over the past few years, due to growing digital media competition from the likes of Meta, Google, and other companies including other social media platforms.

In 2023, Tegna abandoned its $8.6 billion deal with hedge-fund operator Standard General. Soon after the deal was announced, the Biden administration’s FCC decided to hold hearings with regard to the deal -- nearly always bad news for media company deal-making.

Tegna pulled the plug soon afterwards.

Nexstar currently has TV stations -- owned or partnered -- that reach 63% of U.S. TV households. Including other platforms, total U.S. household reach is 70%. Tegna also owns linear TV networks The CW and NewsNation.

Presumably, Nexstar is right at the 39% mark -- as is Tegna.

It is unclear what Tegna's overall TV household reach is among its 64 owned TV stations. Tegna is the largest owner of top-tier network affiliates (ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox) in the top 25 markets -- mostly all VHF stations.

However, it is important to note that the FCC says a UHF TV station in markets is counted as only half that of a VHF station, in terms of the amount of TV households in that specific market -- a so-called “UHF discount” rule. Nexstar and Tegna meets those FCC requirements.

What is not clear is the timing of the announcement -- and whether regulatory federal restrictions that were expected to be easier prompted the move.

“Nexstar remains optimally positioned to take advantage of whatever ends up shaking loose in the M&A market, which could get a boost at next month's FCC meeting,” wrote Daniel Kurnos, media analyst of Benchmark Equity Research, before the news broke with regard to Tegna. "We have continued to call Nexstar the safest play in the space, and they remain the must-own for folks wanting exposure to the evolving deregulatory environment,” Kurnos said.

Some TV stations groups have seen dramatic stock price declines in recent years -- in the wake of continued digital media competition. This new FCC is looking to let the marketplace decide -- more so than with other businesses, and perhaps other areas of the media.

Nexstar sees some good news coming, possibly in a few weeks.

Monday, August 11, 2025

OpenAI Launches GPT-5, Integrates With Microsoft - Here's What Advertisers Should Know

 

OpenAI Launches GPT-5, Integrates With Microsoft - Here's What Advertisers Should Know

OpenAI released GPT-5, the fifth generation of its artificial intelligence technology that powers ChatGPT.

This version arrived more than two years after the March 2023 release of OpenAI’s last model, putting into question for advertisers how it would change search and the way AI chat and agentic agents supports brands.

Microsoft on Thursday said it has incorporated GPT-5 into Copilot, its own AI assistant.

For users with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses, GPT-5 will appear in calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings and contacts.

Copilot takes prompts, understands it, and uses GPT-5’s real-time router to choose the best model to reason over the prompt and craft a response. It can prioritize speed, using GPT-5’s smart, high-throughput model to craft quick, succinct responses to straightforward questions.


For complex or more open-ended questions, GPT-5 will help Copilot detect that the prompt requires advanced reasoning. In those cases, it will use deeper reasoning model, taking its time to craft a plan, gather and comprehend all relevant context, and check its work before providing a thorough response.

AI market share skews toward OpenAI use. BrightEdge July 2025 data shows that ChatGPT leads in terms of user growth compared with rival AI engines referrals to websites.

Google still maintains an overall share of the market at approximately 90%, but ChatGPT holds more than 21% market share month over month; Claude holds 21%; and Perplexity holds about 19%. The data was pulled from BrightEdge customers across key industries, organization sizes, and geographic locations between July and August 2025.

The data also reveals that ChatGPT user agent activity surged 200% in July. ChatGPT bots nearly doubled their activity, showing users relying on real-time web searches to answer questions almost doubled within just one month.

One of the more interesting findings advertisers should know reflects the number of pages requested from ChatGPT on behalf of users—about 33% of the level of actual users going to pages from organic search. It actively crawls websites to build its search index at the same level as Google desktop.

BrightEdge data shows that ChatGPT bots facilitate real-user activities in ways BrightEdge analysts have never seen before, and blocking them doesn't just impact search engine optimization strategies, it could impact user engagement and website functions when consumers are increasingly relying on AI to guide their purchasing decisions.

"What we're seeing is a fundamental shift in how information gets discovered and consumed,” said Jim Yu, founder and CEO of BrightEdge, adding that AI agents are here, they are not coming. “These agents are interacting with websites and serving content to users in real-time conversations. The bottom line: Agentic website activity is going mainstream, reflecting a fundamental shift in AI strategy from assistants to interactive user/site agents."

Rival Anthropic released the latest version of Claude, its own chatbot, earlier in the week in a race to compete with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, DeepSeek and others.

Why The Future Of Search Will Be Written By Moms, Not Marketers

 

Why The Future Of Search Will Be Written By Moms, Not Marketers

Let’s be honest: Moms have changed how they search for information. Gone are the days of typing in a couple of keywords and clicking through pages of links. Today’s Gen Z and millennial moms are asking very specific, real-world questions like, “What are the best first foods for babies?” or “How do I teach my toddler water safety?” And increasingly, they expect AI to deliver the answers.

This is where Large Language Models (LLMs), the engines behind platforms like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and TikTok’s in-app AI, come into play. These tools are trained to respond with helpful, human-like insights. Unfortunately, many marketers are still writing algorithms. Moms are searching for solutions. And who are the people who speak that language best? Other moms.

That’s why influencers -- specifically, mom creators and bloggers -- are now a critical part of the AI-driven search landscape. Their content naturally mirrors the way consumers phrase their questions. It’s filled with context, emotion, nuance, and above all, authenticity. In one recent toy campaign, 25% of the blog content created by mom influencers showed up in AI-generated search previews. Not because it was engineered for search, but because it was written for people.


When I speak to brand managers about influencer ROI, I often challenge them to look beyond the typical performance metrics. Views and clicks are easy to track, but the real power of influencer content today lies in its ability to appear in LLM-powered search results. That means the same post that drives engagement on Instagram can also help answer a parent’s question in a conversational AI tool six months later.

To get there, brands need to work smarter with creators. That includes sharing keyword strategies, educating influencers on how AI interprets content, and collaborating on narratives that go beyond surface-level product mentions.

This doesn’t mean over-engineering posts. It means helping influencers lean into what they already do well: storytelling, honesty, and value-driven content.

The best-performing content today is multiformat and multidimensional: blog posts with personal anecdotes. Reels that demo a product in a real home. YouTube videos with unscripted reviews. Even comment sections matter. AI sees those signals and ranks the content accordingly.

In the age of LLM search, authenticity isn’t just good branding, it’s discoverability. Moms don’t want manufactured copy; they want answers they can trust. If marketers want to show up in that space, they’ll need to start thinking more like moms and less like marketers.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Digital Video Set to Capture Nearly 60% Of All TV-Video Ad Spend In 2025

 


Digital Video Set to Capture Nearly 60% Of All TV-Video Ad Spend In 2025

IAB data finds CTV rebounded to double-digit growth in 2024. Sports, live streaming events and programmatic ad tools fuel CTV growth.

A resurgence in live events and sports programming on streaming platforms, coupled with the expansion of self-serve and programmatic ad tools, helped CTV rebound with 16% year-over-year (YoY) growth in 2024, according to IAB’s 2025 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report: Part One

Now in its 12th year, the report, developed in partnership with Advertiser Perceptions and Guideline, provides a comprehensive snapshot of the U.S. digital video marketplace across CTV, social video, and online video, surfacing how and where ad dollars are flowing and why.

“2024 was a pivotal year for digital video advertising. With high-quality content moving to streaming, advancements in advertising technology, and an influx of new inventory accelerated growth for both consumers and advertisers,” said David Cohen, IAB CEO. “CTV is making it clear it’s a go-to channel for both viewers and advertisers and is expected to continue growing along with social video and online video.”

Digital Video Is Pulling Further Ahead of Linear TV, Solidifying Its Dominance

This year’s findings “underscore a clear shift in momentum as digital video is expected to capture nearly 60% of total TV/video ad spend in 2025, double its share from just five years ago,” IAB says. “This growth builds on a major turning point in 2024, when it surpassed linear TV for the first time. Digital video ad spend rose 18% in 2024 to $64 billion and is projected to grow another 14% in 2025, reaching $72 billion — two to three times faster than total media overall.”

“The video industry continues its transformative shift towards streaming driven by content, creators, technology, and improved measurement. However, it is important to acknowledge that ongoing economic uncertainty, including tariffs, geopolitical conflicts, and changing consumer confidence, the marketplace in 2025 is more difficult to predict than ever before,” Cohen adds.