Omnichannel Ad Measurement without Cookies

Taking a goal-centered measurement approach across multiple channels

During a recent webinar with Adweek, DISQO spoke with Katherine Lundeen, Director of Analytics at EssenceMediacom, to learn how she helps her clients find innovative ways to drive business results through the latest and greatest measurement and analytic strategies.

Q: Cookies are staying. Does it change anything for you, or how your brand clients are challenging you? 

Cookies or no cookies, we're still focused on working with our brands to identify a multichannel approach. Similar to what we saw with Apple, we expect opt-ins to be low. So, with that being the case, we are still recommending testing and exploring additional ways to add supplemental identity options like clean rooms. We're working with clients on leveraging their first-party data and evolving identity graphs. 

Q: How do you stay ahead and adapt your media planning and buying strategies to effectively reach the target audiences that your brands are looking to reach? 

One of the great things about working for the world's largest media investment company is the access to so many great tools, resources, and expert teams. We are able to tap into a broader network of agencies and use that wealth of resources to help our clients align with their goals. We always strive to map out goals so we can measure what matters. Our deep bench of partners allows us to identify deeper and richer data, allowing us to deliver on that. The media industry is always evolving, and having an environment where everything is changing all the time creates a great setting for testing and learning. 

Q: What advice would you give brands looking to balance short-term performance goals with long-term brand building in their media strategies and planning?

It’s always about focusing on the ultimate goal and committing to the measurement framework to reach it upfront. One of our clients, a membership organization, is committed to innovation and personalization in a digital-first approach, so we focus heavily on building out their measurement plan for the long term. They're leveraging first-party data and geo-targeting to build out campaigns for their target demographic. This enables us to gather learnings from each of those campaigns that we can apply to the longer-term strategy. 

DISQO allows us to see connections through the broader brand campaign. We can see how the campaigns influence other lines of business that drive activities in the lower end of funnel. When we build in measurement for mid and longer-term views, we get richer insights that help us view ad effectiveness holistically. 

Q: How difficult is it to work between media partners, platforms, publishers, and brands? Can you tell us about your client’s expectations for proof of efficacy from your team and how you translate that to your media partners? 

Transparency is key. We work actively with our clients on our own, but we also foster a relationship between them and our media partners. This provides our clients with the opportunity to ask deep-diving questions to the appropriate partners. It’s all about making educated decisions about when and how to add these different partners and publishers to our brand plan. 

The second piece of this is setting really clear expectations. Everyone is aligned with the goals—from partners to the client and our internal teams. We build a rapport with our clients and partners during the initial goal-setting process.

Q: How are agencies differentiating themselves with their data-driven capabilities? 

Agencies are taking different approaches right now. Some are building technologies in-house where they're acquiring different companies. Others work as stewards between technology, vendors, clients, and their data partners. Ultimately, we need to adapt to the marketplace, the data available to us, and the circumstances of each client. 

Q: One of the primary reasons you and other clients turned to DISQO is our direct source of identity. How important is holistic and deterministic measurement across an entire media plan as opposed to probabilistic methods? 

When we work with media partners that provide their own brand-led studies, we've had to rely on what they say. When using a methodology that is dependent on opportunity-to-see, it’s not always showing the whole picture. When we started using DISQO with one of our clients, we started to see a lot more variation. Even as DISQO has evolved its capabilities around this methodology and instead gained insight into walled gardens, it became more interesting to ask “why” about a variable number versus an always positive number. With DISQO’s measurement capabilities, we've seen when there are new audiences interacting with our client’s ads. DISQO’s measurement allows us to prove the point about the power of these new audiences and validate that point in a different way. We're seeing the outcome of driving people to our clients’ websites and other places. Our clients get excited about that level of detail, which lets us grow our partnership.

What value has our partnership delivered for EssenceMediacom? 

We're also working with an attention measurement partner. DISQO’s partnership with other vendors helps us understand the broader picture and gain insights across the funnel. With regards to partner lift studies, we have been pretty much reliant on social media platform studies. But getting a holistic picture across social platforms is something that all our clients are committed to, and so are we, because there's true value in that. The added layer across social platforms and insight into how social media performs has been a really valuable and great comparison point. 

DISQO has been very responsive to our needs and what we're looking for. Whether it's working with the client or evolving how we're reporting out on information. It becomes a conversation around how we can use this information and how we can partner with others. 

Q: What's the most challenging issue today that's interfering with your complete understanding of world-class cross-channel ad effectiveness measurement, and how can the industry come together to solve these issues? 

I think there are many challenges. One of the things that is ever present is the issue of making AI scaleable in ways that connect cross-channel signals, regardless of cookies. We've got everything from contextual targeting to hyper-local, to first-party modeling – all the way to one-on-one-personalization. We must find ways to build through that funnel, and we need different tools and partners to help us do that. 

We must bring together sophisticated media planning, buying analytics and measurement. We're not an individual piece of the puzzle. We're working with our planning and investment teams, business science teams, business intelligence data, and the client's tech teams to help understand these signals and see how we can leverage them and push it to the next level. 

We must ask ourselves, “How do we see the full funnel?” “How can we get that visibility in the full funnel?” “How do we deliver those insights and connect that user journey?” Whether it's brand lift or brand health modeling, we're looking at the full journey and how to create a media plan and measurement approach that works together.