Letter from the Council
We're pleased to update you on our continuing projects to address cross-platform measurement, household video-viewing patterns, ROI and the impact of social media on TV consumption. You'll learn more about these developments in this edition.
As we approach the end of another busy and productive year, I'd like to thank all our members and committee volunteers for their selfless efforts to help the CRE advance the dialogue about and understanding of audience research and measurement.
I also want to thank you, our readers, for your interest in our activities. We hope you find this edition informative; please email us if you have any questions.
Lastly, we wish you and yours the happiest of holidays and a wonderful New Year.
Ceril Shagrin
Executive Vice President, Audience Measurement Innovation and Analytics
Univision Communications Inc.
Chair, Council for Research Excellence
The CRE will host a January webinar to inform Nielsen clients of what it has learned from interviews to identify industry executives' priorities, conducted for its forthcoming paper titled Research Agenda for the Alignment of Cross-Platform Media Measurement.
Clients should be on the lookout for an invitation by early January.
Joe Abruzzo, EVP, Chief Exploration Officer, Havas Media, who chairs the CRE's Media Consumption & Engagement (MC&E;) Committee, will share with attendees findings of the completed series of field interviews with 50 leading media, advertising, and research executives and experts, representing a cross section of "traditional" and digital media organizations, conducted for the CRE by Horowitz Associates and Betsy Frank Insights.
Webinar participants will be among the first to learn more about the research agenda itself, Abruzzo notes.
In the interim, MC&E; Committee members are scheduled to conduct meetings to discuss the project with various industry groupings. The meetings will include Nielsen clients who are not CRE members and a "5-to-15" group of executives who have between five and 15 years' industry experience.
The January webinar will delve further than Abruzzo's November ARF West conference presentation, in a session entitled "Making the Impossible Possible: Meeting the Cross-Platform Challenge." The nearly 100 attendees at the brief initial discussion of the interview findings seemed to be in agreement as to the challenges—such as viewability—facing cross-platform measurement, Abruzzo reported. "Reaction was generally positive, with several subsequent presenters referencing the CRE work," he added. The presentation deck can be found here.
The CRE will host a first-quarter 2015 webinar to discuss learnings from the academic review of its "Talking Social TV 2" study. Attendees will learn about the latest insights into the relative impact on TV viewing of social media activity compared to more traditional show promotion and word-of-mouth.
Beth Rockwood, Senior Vice President, Market Resources and Advertising Sales Research, Discovery Communications, and chair of the CRE's Social Media Committee, will host, joined by academic review team members discussing their effort to determine a causative effect of social media usage on TV viewing.
"Talking Social TV 2" was a follow-up to the CRE's 2013 "Talking Social TV" study. Both studies, involving nearly 1,700 study participants, were conducted for the CRE by a research team from Keller Fay Group and fielded by Nielsen units.
Also in the first quarter, CRE ROI Committee Chair David Poltrack, Chief Research Officer at CBS, will host a webinar with the team from CRE research associate Sequent Partners to discuss learnings from industry interviews for the Committee's follow-up study into marketing mix modeling.
Nielsen clients should be on the lookout for invitations to both webinars.
CRE Facilitator Richard Zackon will join David Tice of project research associate GfK to present the latest insights from the CRE's ongoing longitudinal video-viewing ethnography at IIR USA's Media Insights & Engagement Conference, February 3–5, 2015, in San Diego.
The presentation, titled "Insights into the Effects of Internet Technology and Video Platform Proliferation on Viewing Behaviors," will provide attendees a further look into the two-year study of households' viewing behaviors.
The CRE unveiled initial findings from the longitudinal ethnography—alongside completed findings from an acceleration ethnography—at an August 2014 presentation drawing nearly 200 industry colleagues and guests. A slide presentation of the findings announced on August 6 can be found here.
An update will be provided in a future newsletter.
At a recent Council meeting, Ceril Shagrin, Executive Vice President, Audience Measurement Innovation and Analytics, Univision Communications Inc., was re-elected chair of the Council for Research Excellence. All current members of the Steering Committee agreed to renew their Committee memberships, and Emily Vanides, SVP, Research, MediaVest, agreed to fill a vacant Steering Committee seat, which she adds to her current role as chair of the Communications Committee and a new role assisting CRE Facilitator Richard Zackon with CRE Treasury duties.
Research associate Sequent Partners has completed the literature search portion and is well underway on conducting interviews for the follow-up study into marketing mix modeling. The project was launched this summer by the CRE's ROI Committee, chaired by David Poltrack. The project advances toward a fourth-quarter white paper.
The CRE's 2013 and 2014 "Talking Social TV" and "Talking Social TV 2" studies, conducted with research associate Keller Fay Group and fielded by Nielsen Life360, continue to garner positive industry reaction, reports Beth Rockwood, Senior Vice President, Market Resources and Advertising Sales Research, Discovery Communications, and chair of the CRE's Social Media Committee.
The academic review of the findings of the most recent study, "Talking Social TV 2," is proceeding toward fall completion and promises to offer further insights to the effectiveness of mobile journaling of media habits and behavior.
The 2013 "Talking Social TV" and 2014 "Talking Social TV 2" presentations can be found on the Social Media Committee page of the CRE web site.
Hadassa Gerber, who served on the Council for a number of years representing the Syndicated Network Television Association (which was closed in summer 2014), has been readmitted to the Council from her new post as Senior Vice President and Chief Research Officer of the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB). Her predecessor in that role, Stacey Schulman, moved earlier this year from TVB to Katz Media Group and was readmitted to the Council, representing Katz, in June.
As the CRE's activities have expanded, so has the need for the CRE website, www.researchexcellence.com, to keep up. The CRE is in the midst of a comprehensive update of the site, with the new version to be unveiled by second quarter 2015. Included will be new, more user-friendly features enabling industry colleagues to track completed and in-progress research more easily, a calendar of events involving the CRE, and regular updates on developments throughout the audience research and measurement field.
We will keep readers apprised as the re-launch date approaches.
The CRE has begun sharing with newsletter subscribers a weekly digest of some top stories in the media and audience measurement industries. The topics covered include big data, CRE news, digital and mobile trends, network and local TV, measurement news, social media trends, and developments in the set-top box and related return-path measurement areas. These clip reports are distributed on Fridays.
This is an opt-in service. If you or any colleagues would like to receive these weekly clips, please opt in via the CRE homepage. (If you do not opt in, you will not be added to this weekly distribution.)
The CRE's 2013 and 2014 "Talking Social TV" and "Talking Social TV 2" studies, conducted with research associate Keller Fay Group and fielded by Nielsen Life360, continue to garner positive industry reaction, reports Beth Rockwood, Senior Vice President, Market Resources and Advertising Sales Research, Discovery Communications, and chair of the CRE's Social Media Committee.
The academic review of the findings of the most recent study, "Talking Social TV 2," is proceeding toward fall completion and promises to offer further insights to the effectiveness of mobile journaling of media habits and behavior.
Stacey, Howard and Susie were CRE members when with previous employers.
At the CRE's quarterly meeting in March, the Council welcomed as a member John McMorrow, Senior Vice President, Programming & Research, at Cox Television's HRP subsidiary.
Longtime CRE member Jack Wakshlag stepped down at the end of March from his position as Chief Research Officer at Turner Broadcasting. During his 12-year term in that role, he has been credited with innovations such as establishing Turner as the first TV organization to begin coding its programming to measure the impact of over-the-top video consumption on commercial viewing; digital ad load testing that persuaded Turner to place content online with full ad loads; CNN All Screen; Advanced Media Targeting; a highly regarded promo testing data base; and successful program/movie estimating processes, among other achievements. We know readers join us in congratulating Jack on this recently concluded phase of his distinguished career and in wishing him the best on his next endeavors.
The CRE has begun a committee for the study of the effects of commercial pod length. The committee, chaired by Hadassa Gerber, Director of Research for the Syndicated Network Television Association (SNTA), expects to begin its inaugural research effort in 2014.
We're pleased to welcome back Judy Vogel, Vice President of Research at Gannett Company, Inc.; Michael Nathanson, Senior Research Analyst at MoffettNathanson, LLC; and Bryon Schafer, Senior Vice President of Research at Warner Bros. Television. All three were prior CRE members while with other companies, and were re-admitted at the CRE's December quarterly meeting.
The Steering Committee of the CRE voted to approve the establishment of a $30,000 scholarship in the name of Susan Whiting, at her alma mater Denison University. Susan, who will be retiring from her position as vice chair at Nielsen at year-end, was instrumental in the creation of the CRE in 2005.
The CRE welcomes its newest members:
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About the Council for Research Excellence
The Council for Research Excellence (CRE) is an independent research group created in 2005 and funded by Nielsen. The CRE is dedicated to advancing the knowledge and practice of audience measurement methodology and comprises senior-level industry researchers.
CRE members represent advertising agencies, media-buying firms, media companies, advertisers, digital publishers, social media companies, and industry organizations including ABC, AMC Networks, CBS, Comcast, Cox Media Group, Discovery Communications, ESPN, Gannett Co., Greater Media, GroupM, Havas Media, Horizon Media, Katz Media Group, Kimberly-Clark, LIN Media, Magna Global, the Media Rating Council, NBC Universal, Nielsen, Omnicom Media Group, Radio Advertising Bureau, Raycom Media, Scripps Networks Interactive, Starcom MediaVest Group, Television Bureau of Advertising, Tribune Co., Turner Broadcasting, 21st Century Fox, Twitter, Universal McCann, Univision and Viacom Entertainment Group.
For more information about the Council for Research Excellence, please visit http://www.researchexcellence.com/.