Best Practices for Cross-Screen Measurement

Industry leaders discuss changes in the industry and how pharma marketers are adapting.

From Connected TV (CTV) to Online Video (OLV), there are more data-driven ways to reach health audiences with video messaging than ever before. In this increasingly fragmented landscape, it can be difficult to plan, measure, and optimize video advertising campaigns across screens and devices. Veeva recently sat down with industry experts from Initiative, Roku, and Samsung Ads to talk about how marketers can take advantage of new opportunities while maximizing the business impact of their direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising.

Understanding the changing video landscape

A growing share of on-demand, premium video content is ad-supported, so marketers have new ways to reach highly engaged viewers. More consumers are accessing long-form video content without going through a traditional cable or satellite provider. This type of viewing, which can take place on any device, is known as over-the-top (OTT). One of the fastest-growing areas of OTT is CTV, which refers to content accessed on an internet-connected TV device.

Eric Lloyd, head of health & wellness at Roku, said consumers are embracing a personalized, on-demand content experience. “Using a smart TV or a streaming device, you can build your own content network with subscriptions and advertising-based apps. That personalization is streaming television at its finest,” he said.

Consumers may access CTV content within streaming service apps offered by companies like Hulu or NBCU, which sell targeted advertising to run alongside their content. Consumers access the apps through software offered by companies like Roku or smart-TV makers like Samsung. These companies also sell CTV advertising targeted to the device or user. CTV unites the granular targeting of digital with the engagement and effectiveness of traditional TV, making it an exciting channel for marketers.

“Everything starts with our consumers,” said Ryan Wilson, head of pharma sales, Samsung Ads. “For us, it’s all about creating a great user interface and helping them find the content they want. That, in turn, allows us to capture more data, to effectively target messaging, and help advertisers reach their campaign goals.”

Measuring reach and impact across devices

Since today’s consumers watch ad-supported video content across multiple devices, marketers are taking a diversified approach to their video strategies. Understanding overlap and synergies between different delivery mechanisms and devices can improve marketing effectiveness.

“The measurement gold standard is media match back to health data,” said Hart Mechlin, director, Crossix analytics partnerships, Veeva. “As our clients test new video platforms, tying media to business outcomes ensures that all campaigns are measured using a common, and comparable, currency.”

In addition, many marketers want to understand unique reach across various devices, and the influence of each marketing touchpoint on patient behavior. “From an agency perspective, we’re working to connect the dots to reconcile unique reach across linear TV, digital display, and targeted video,” said Sus Misra, senior group director, analytics, Initiative. “With all of these new methodologies and mechanisms, understanding the overlap and incremental reach helps us determine the value of each type of video delivery, individually and together.”

Historically, linear TV measurement was done through panels and surveys, which tend to rely on lagging or self-reported behavior. “Legacy TV measurement panels are not sufficient for today’s data-driven marketer,” said Mechlin. “Our customers are looking for the flexibility from their TV partners to optimize early and often.”

“Digital helped to set a higher measurement standard than linear TV because of all the data available,” said Lloyd. “And now we have that data available for CTV and the ability to measure a closed-loop campaign. We’re embracing that.”

According to Mechlin, marketers should look for a measurement partner with a methodology designed to measure across different devices and channels. “We incorporate data feeds from media partners across the ecosystem,” he said. “With exposure data matched back to health data at the person level, marketers can optimize unique reach, duplication, frequency and impact.”

Unifying your video strategy

So how can marketers take advantage of these cross-screen opportunities and deliver on the promise of the right message to the right audience at the right time?

“You need to start with the audience and where consumers are spending their time,” said Wilson. “There are over 2,000 apps on our TVs, and consumers are spending the majority of their time outside where brands are buying ads in the broadcast upfronts, in particular, within AVOD environments such as Samsung TV Plus, creating new opportunities to reach previously hard to reach audiences.”

In this fragmented market, it can be challenging to set up buys, understand the unique reach and manage duplication and frequency. Marketers are using data and health audience segments to unify their video strategy across tactics. For example, CTV can be a way to supplement your linear TV buy and reach incremental audiences.

“From an agency perspective, we’re beginning to think about how CTV can actually exist beyond an upper funnel tactic to engage at more than one stage in our audience’s journey,” said Misra. “We also think about using CTV to re-engage audiences that may have already been exposed to messaging via display, custom content, whatever the case might be. CTV can provide that final layer of exposure that might then elicit behavior.”

What’s next

While targeted video provides many new opportunities for brands to reach highly-qualified health audiences, the fragmented landscape can be difficult to navigate. We expect to see more consolidation in the industry, which will simplify strategy and execution of health advertising campaigns and help the overall advertising ecosystem.

Go back to basics with our introduction to digital video advertising and measurement in the Guide to Digital Video for Health Marketers.

Meet the panelists

Eric Lloyd, Head of Industry, Health & Wellness, Roku
Eric joined Roku last year to build up their health and pharma offering in the streaming TV space, growing industry partnerships to bring additional value to Roku’s partners. Eric joined Roku from Facebook, where he worked closely with health and CPG brands to redefine social marketing as a business driver. Eric spent the earlier part of his career working at WebMD on content and editorial partnerships and even had a brief stint with GSK as a pharma rep across multiple disease states.

Sus Misra, Senior Group Director, Analytics & Client Solutions, Initiative
Sus has over 15 years of dedicated experience in managed care, healthcare tech, and pharma. He has worked with a diverse and comprehensive array of data and guided an extensive portfolio of clients, including Pfizer, Novartis, and Gilead. In partnership with cross-functional business units and analytics teams, Sus has successfully rendered complex and disparate datasets relevant to key stakeholders and guided his clients towards their desired business objectives.

Ryan Wilson, Director, Health & Pharma, Samsung Ads
Ryan is the senior sales manager and director responsible for leading the health and pharma vertical at Samsung Ads. With more than 14 years of digital marketing experience spanning CTV, OLV, data, programmatic, and mobile within start-up, rapidly growing, and globally established companies. He helps brands bridge the gap between their linear and digital marketing by unlocking the power of data to identify, reach, engage and measure their most valuable audiences wherever they are consuming digital content.

Hart Mechlin, Director, Crossix Analytics Partnerships, Veeva
In his six years at Crossix, Hart has worked on many different teams, including client services, product, and partnerships. In his current role leading Crossix relationships with media owners, he focuses primarily on partnerships that support current products and enable measurement of new channels.