В Австралии в 2027 году запустят единую независимую систему измерения кросс-медийной аудитории

It was revealed yesterday that the Video Futures Collective (VFC) and AudienceProject, a provider of independent cross-media measurement, are set to launch an independent cross-media audience measurement solution in early 2027. The move, according to some media buyers, has brought the industry closer to a unifying measurement product. With this collaboration, the VFC becomes the launch customer for AudienceProject in Australia, laying the foundation for what it says will be a transparent, consistent, and privacy-safe view of campaign reach and frequency across participating video platforms. The result will be independently measured reporting, that applies a consistent methodology across all participating media owners. The platform already operates across Europe, North America and Latin America. B&T spoke to various industry experts on what they think of the proposed measurement system. The design is proven and the reuse of existing global integrations is genuinely smart — it takes years off deployment and cost out. That is the strongest thing about this announcement. The trade-off is that you are adapting a global platform to Australia rather than building for Australia. This market has quirks — regional markets, SBS’s multicultural audiences, co-viewing patterns — and the question is how much survives a configuration rather than a build. It also rests on an opt-in panel, which carries self-selection risk. Opt-in is pragmatic, but not neutral, and it is what I would want independently audited before telling a client to plan on it. For Shai Luft, chief operations officer and co-founder of Bench Media, the announcement “is promising”. “Buyers will need transparency around the panel, methodology, data inputs, auditing and governance. Independent measurement cannot just mean applying a common calculation to data supplied by participating platforms. The market must be able to understand and trust what sits underneath the numbers,” he told B&T. “The rollout of VOZ shows how difficult this work can be. VOZ was first announced in 2018, but it took several years of development, industry consultation and systems integration before it became Australia’s official television trading currency at the end of 2024.” Something similar to what the medium out-of-home has in MOVE 2.0. “MOVE provides a positive example of what can happen when an industry ultimately aligns behind a common measurement framework. Australia’s major out-of-home media owners supported its development, agencies were involved through the Media Federation of Australia, and it is now the unified currency used for planning, buying and reporting across the channel. That gives buyers a consistent basis for comparing inventory, regardless of which participating media owner they use,” said Luft. “The risk in video is that Australia ends up with several competing measurement products, each supported by different groups of media owners and each claiming to represent the market. That would replace one problem with another. The best outcome would be competition during the development of the strongest solutions, followed by broad industry agreement around a common standard that buyers can confidently use. MOVE shows that industry alignment is possible, even if achieving it takes considerable time, investment and collaboration.” Taylor Fielding, CEO of TFM Digital, explains the new proposed system is a step forward in unified industry service. “We’re seeing a few other industry bodies do the same sort of thing. It’s a step forward in the way that we can actually report and measure probably. I think it’s going to be great for the planners in my team especially, not having to look across five or six different data sets. The unified sort of measurements, it’s exciting. And then to have third-party back it up, I think that’s even better so that we can compare them,” he told B&T. “We have to go that way, right? Right now we’re looking at five or six different data sets depending on what we’re buying and we can’t really give a clear, proved, or unified measurement across our clients who are running it.” As mentioned before, the system is already in place in other markets across the globe. Virginia Hyland, CEO and commercial partner of SQUAD M&A sees that as a both a negative and a positive. “The design is proven and the reuse of existing global integrations is genuinely smart — it takes years off deployment and cost out. That is the strongest thing about this announcement,” she said. “The trade-off is that you are adapting a global platform to Australia rather than building for Australia. This market has quirks — regional markets, SBS’s multicultural audiences, co-viewing patterns — and the question is how much survives a configuration rather than a build. It also rests on an opt-in panel, which carries self-selection risk. Opt-in is pragmatic, but not neutral, and it is what I would want independently audited before telling a client to plan on it.” AudienceProject joins the big players of Nielsen and OzTam as measurers of media audiences across television, streaming, radio, and digital platforms. Luft added, this begs the silver bullet which has been shot around for a while now, the need for a “broader industry agreement around a common standard that buyers can confidently use.” The proposed AudienceProject system will combine census-level campaign impression data from participating video platforms with an opt-in Australian audience panel. The panel will help establish audience demographics and deduplicate reach across the different services. For advertisers, the system is designed to provide a single view of campaign reach and frequency across multiple video platforms, using a consistent methodology rather than forcing marketers to reconcile separate platform reports with different definitions of audiences and impressions. However, for Luft he believes the AudienceProject measurement system, won’t be as valuable for media buyers until more media broadcasters sign on to use it. “It’s important to be clear that this will initially provide a view across participating Video Futures Collective members, not the entire Australian video market. Major commercial broadcasters and their streaming platforms, including Seven, Nine and Paramount’s Network 10, are not currently listed as members,” he told B&T. “That does not diminish the value of the initiative, but it means the system should initially be viewed as an important piece of the measurement landscape rather than a complete cross-media video currency. Its value will increase substantially if it attracts wider participation and connects effectively with the rest of the Australian television and video market. “The absences mean the initial system will not represent the entire Australian video market. That does not make it unhelpful, but broader participation will be important if it’s to become a genuinely influential industry standard.” Currently, only VMC’s members of Amazon Prime, Disney Advertising, Foxtel Media, Netflix, Samsung Ads, SBS, Vevo and YouTube will be included in the measurement system when it rolls out in early 2027. This is a limitation that Hyland has also highlighted to B&T. “Seven, Nine and Ten are not in the VFC. So it is cross-platform system, but not yet cross-market — and any advertiser wanting a complete Australian video picture will still need to stitch two systems together,” she said. However, Fielding believes that since SBS is already on the system the other major broadcasters will have to come to. “The other guys are going to have to jump. There is no reason for them not to. If they can get them on board, it’s going to be that unified thing that we have been wanting for a while,” he said.