Missing Currency Makes Attribution Expensive: Spark Foundry’s Giacosa

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The explosion of devices, platforms and services through which to serve digital content and marketing messages gives brands and their agencies big new opportunities.

And also some big headaches.

Because, whilst embracing multiple destinations and even closing the loop to consumer action can maximize audience, it also means many different masters to serve.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Lisa Giacosa, EVP and global MD of data and analytics at Publicis Media's Spark Foundry, explains that lack of commonality in the way agencies can buy across uniquely-different new video and TV platforms is causing a problem.

"TV attribution (is) great," she says.

"(There are) some great data sources out there.

(But) we don't have a common currency yet - in order to get a full picture across the industry ... we have to work with multiple partners.

"It makes it a very cost-prohibitive opportunity for clients to get the full picture.

We can work with set top box data, we can work with connected TV data, we can work with ad server data, all of those areas.

But the reality is that that's then dipping into multiple data sets that cost multiple times and also aren't interconnected.

"If you think about the data you might get off of a Sony TV versus a Vizio TV, you're potentially looking at very different data sets." Giacosa says that the Sony viewer is probably watching the home's primary TV and may have a relatively higher income, whilst a Vizio viewer may have a lower income, it may even be in a child's bedroom.

She is calling for commonality and consistency.

But she says legislation in GDPR and CCPA have introduced commonality in a way that doesn't understand what agencies are trying to do - namely, give viewers control over the ads they receive.

She wants an independent body to ensure checks and balances on the industry.

Giacosa was interviewed by MTM partner Jon Watts at Beet Retreat San Juan 2020, where she was a participant.