As one of the biggest global advertisers Unilever has long championed a positive, responsible advertising ecosystem, promoting the 3Vs of viewability, verification and value, and tackling issues of ad fraud and brand safety.
The 2018 launch of the Responsibility Framework deepened and broadened Unilever’s approach to partner engagement through commitments to ensure Responsible Platforms, Content and Infrastructure.
Over the past year Unilever has made significant steps towards building a model that offers brands real transparency of media performance, assessing unduplicated reach and impact across publishers, platforms and screens in a privacy-safe way. This progress was made by working closely and proactively with digital advertising and measurement partners to address industry needs around holistic media measurement.
In order to accelerate solutions for the industry, Unilever has engaged the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and other industry bodies, to invite other brands, platforms and publishers to join in efforts to further develop the holistic measurement system.
Unilever is leading an effort to develop a model that will combine existing industry measurement tools into a best-in-class system that measures a campaign audience, audience reaction, campaign impact and sustained impact over the short, medium and long-term. Unilever, with help from its partners, seeks to create a system that will operate across multiple markets to offer a global solution, and not only puts privacy first, but puts consumer experience at the forefront of the advertising ecosystem in an innovative way.
Keith Weed, Unilever Chief Marketing Officer, 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. We look forward to welcoming other leading advertisers and industry associations to the initiative to help address this industry challenge.”
“Unilever has always been a champion of key industry-wide initiatives,” said Carolyn Everson, Facebook VP of Global Marketing Solutions. “It’s important that we and others work toward a cross-media measurement solution – one that leverages independent third-party systems, protects privacy, and improves people’s experience with ads.”
“With a privacy first approach, we are excited to partner with Unilever on their forward-looking measurement solution,” said Matt Derella, head of revenue and operations, Twitter. “Effectively calculating return on investment across channels and quantifying impact among Twitter’s leaned-in audience are critical to understanding performance in the digital landscape.”
“Unilever is addressing one of the industry’s greatest challenges — the need to measure campaign performance in a uniform and consistent fashion,” said Kirk Perry, President, Google Brand Solutions. “It’s an initiative well aligned with Google’s longstanding commitment to transparency, and we are pleased that the WFA has agreed to assume stewardship of the process.”
Mark Inskip, CEO UK & Ireland, Kantar Media said, “Kantar are committed to working with advertisers and publishers to solve for a holistic cross media measurement solution that brings understanding of the audience to a campaign across paid, owned and earned media along with the impact on brand perception and sales performance”
“Regardless of where you stand in the industry, having cross platform measurement is essential to driving monetization and growth. We’re thrilled to provide Total Ad Ratings measurement of Unilever’s advertising across platforms and are proud to support its efforts to drive standardization and adoption of cross media measurement,” said Megan Clarken, President – Media at Nielsen.
