Here's an extract of a thing I wrote in response to Omar Oakes The Media Leader column today: https://lnkd.in/e4xpFDZi
"Advertisers, via their trade body, played little part in what is now BARB and was JICTAR. There were exceptions, like P&G and Mars, but the rest rarely showed up to any discussion.
The agencies (I was an IPA representative on both the Technical Sub-Committee and the Management Committee) were also bit players. TV audience measurement was a matter for the broadcasters (including the BBC) who after all paid for the bulk of it.
Advertisers' and agencies' needs were not the same as broadcasters' and yet when push came to shove the ones doing the shoving were the guys paying the bill.
How times change. Having argued for decades that advertisers should play a more active part in audience research, and pay for the privilege, we now have Origin where they do just that.
Unlike some, I'm a big fan of Origin, and more specifically its vision. Its ambition is huge - a system that lets agencies and their clients combine media forms; and apply judgements informed by and appropriate to the circumstances. Eventually I hope it will allow for combinations not just of video forms but of advertising and non-advertising forms too. Want to play around with what an influencer campaign will add to your social-media plan? Or what impact PR will have in extending your TV activity? Want to plan in a campaign specific level of attention as opposed to using averages and norms?
Can Origin do any of this now? No. But as the old adage goes the best way to eat an elephant is one small bite at a time.
I was on stage several years ago at the asi event when Phil Smith announced Origin. I was there again this month when he was asked about progress by a room of audience researchers frustrated at how long this is taking.
To them, it's worth remembering that Origin isn't creating a project, of the sort they're familiar with but a product designed to help advertisers make smarter investment decisions - across video channels certainly but ultimately across multiple communication channels, both advertising and non-advertising. Further it's a planners' tool, not a currency. And planners consider a lot more than audience size.
As to the attitude to date of broadcasters, I think they're misguided. Their world has always been the world of the buyer and the seller, not the planner and the strategist. Their medium is the most powerful and effective ad medium yet invented. Still.
Far better to be on the inside making the point and ensuring aspects like the quality of the message are baked into the system, than sitting outside lobbing rocks.
I hope that those in possession of a planning mindset - of which the broadcasters have many - win over their trading colleagues and join in making Origin the best aid to planning it can possibly be.”
