Comscore and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA’s) SeeHer are furthering their work together to push gender-equality measurement beyond audience measurement and span across entire advertising campaign lifecycles.
The two partnered back in August to develop Gender Equality Measure (GEM) Audiences, a digital planning insight tool to measure the importance of gender equality for advertisers' target audiences. The partnership embedded the new tool into Comscore’s Plan Metrix platform — a broader data insight and custom audience targeting tool established in 2017 with over 11,000 endpoints on audiences’ online activities and behaviors, including streaming service engagement — to help advertisers and marketers more thoroughly understand their audience segments.
During a panel session at Advertising Week New York that focused on using responsible representation in media to drive consumer engagement, CRO of ANA and SeeHer Latha Sarathy shared that women control $31 trillion of global consumer spending, yet only 16% of women feel that media usually represents them accurately. “Women are the world's biggest economic driver… but they do not still today feel accurately represented,” she stated.
Following the AWNewYork panel, Comscore SVP, Head of Client Insights, Danan Ren told StreamTV Insider that the tool established in August already offers help in audience targeting, “the planning and insight side,” but they have since seen a number of publishers and brands come back with interest in measuring the holistic campaign. Ren hinted at a pending partnership with the Daily Mail as an example.
“That's where we're putting our heads together and saying, We know there's a tool, let's build the next phase of this journey together,” fulfilling their flywheel of complete campaign measurement, she explained.
Digital: the ‘missing piece’ of the puzzle
During the panel discussion, Ren depicted the average consumer — engaging with content across traditional TV, print, theaters and newer digital contexts like social media and CTV.
“What was missing was that digital piece… all of the dollars are now moving towards digital,” she stated.
Throughout this coming quarter and the beginning of Q1 in 2024 Comscore and ANA are working with advertisers, publishers and brands to leverage the planning and insights tool and focus on “reaching the audience where they are and where they're more open [to understand] who that audience is in the digital space,” she elaborated in the interview, whether that be on a CTV or a mobile app.
ANA is able to go in using its GEM testing methodology and score the ads based on their gender-equality awareness. Comscore can then follow that commitment through the holistic campaign with cross-medium measurement and its brand survey lift, asking consumers exposed to the campaign, “Did this resonate with you? Do you feel that this campaign really represented women?” She listed these questions as a jumping-off point for deeper questions of representation.
“This is a tool that's going to directly tell [advertisers], ‘Hey, your audience: here's your makeup, and they care about representation, they care about gender equality, they feel that there is still movement and progress to be made on those fronts,’” she said. “It's about leveraging data to drive the industry forward.”
While the tool is already in testing with certain partners, she noted that the companies anticipate an official launch by the end of the month or early November.