Unilever calls on brands to join pioneering cross-media measurement initiative

Unilever has called on brands, platforms and publishers to join efforts to create a measurement system that would allow advertisers to measure campaign audience, audience reaction, campaign impact and sustained impact over the short, medium and long term across digital, TV and social media.

The FMCG giant said it had already made "significant steps" towards building a model that offered "real transparency of media performance, assessing unduplicated reach and impact across publishers, platforms and screens in a privacy-safe way".

The system as it stands only covers TV, digital and social media, but Unilever said it was looking at incorporating other media.

It said the efforts were part of its aim to support "responsible infrastructure", one of three commitments made by outgoing chief marketing and communications officer Keith Weed in February last year, along with responsible platforms and responsible content.

Keith Weed

Unilever has engaged the World Federation of Advertisers and other industry bodies to invite brands, platforms and publishers to get involved. The project will combine existing measurement tools and is intended to result in a system that can operate across multiple markets and "puts consumer experience at the forefront of the advertising ecosystem in an innovative way".

Weed said: "To realise our vision of a more transparent and high-quality digital ecosystem, our partnerships have been, and will remain, instrumental in developing an always-on, privacy-safe model for cross-media measurement.

"We are hugely encouraged that our digital and measurement partners worked with us to enable these significant steps towards solving the challenge of holistic media measurement. This represents a genuine willingness across the industry to find creative, effective solutions to shared issues."

The ambitions were welcomed by industry leaders including Carolyn Everson, vice-president of global marketing services at Facebook; Kirk Perry, president of Google Brand Solutions; and Matt Derella, head of revenue and operations at Twitter.