NEW YORK, NY — Getting clarity on advertisers’ return on investment remains the main challenge in media measurement, even as speed and precision become increasingly important in an environment where global advertising spend approaches $1 trillion with 75% allocated to digital channels, noted Cara Pratt, president of Retail & Media at Circana.
“If marketers aren’t confident on the ROI— and confident on the business results and business outcomes — speed and the layer of data doesn’t matter,” Pratt told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan.
This focus on business impact clarity drives Circana’s strategy as it integrates two major acquisitions completed in August, Nielsen’s Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and the Nielsen/Catalina joint venture NCSolutions. The deals were done within a 90-day period to create what Pratt called “the most comprehensive end-to-end platform for media measurement.”
Complementary capabilities
The recent acquisitions provide complementary measurement capabilities that address different phases of the media planning and optimization cycle. NCSolutions focuses on real-time audience intelligence, targeting, and in-flight optimization, while MMM enables longer-term strategic analysis of channel investment effectiveness.
“NCS is more in real time, in real time audience intelligence and audience targeting in-flight optimization, of course, campaign measurement,” Pratt said. “While of course, MMM allows us to zoom out, zoom out and understand a more holistic understanding of the weights of channel investment and the business outcomes that they drive.”
This combination addresses both tactical campaign management and strategic media mix planning within a single platform ecosystem.
Innovation acceleration through integration
Beyond acquiring existing capabilities, Circana is developing new tools that leverage the combined data assets from both acquisitions. The company recently launched Liquid Mix, a self-serve marketing mix modeling tool with forecasting capabilities that delivers results in hours rather than weeks.
“Liquid Mix is something we recently came out with, which is a self-serve marketing mix tool with forecasting capabilities that turns in hours,” Pratt said.
Additionally, Circana is developing a creative intelligence suite that will integrate with MMM’s capabilities to provide holistic ROI analysis that includes creative effectiveness alongside media mix measurement.
Creative intelligence enhances scope
The upcoming creative intelligence engine represents a significant expansion of measurement capabilities beyond traditional media mix analysis. This tool will evaluate creative performance as a component of overall campaign effectiveness rather than treating it as a separate consideration.
“We are right in the middle of developing and deploying a creative intelligence suite,” Pratt said. “That creative intelligence suite or engine is going to power a new level of understanding for holistic ROI and media mix measurement.”
This integration of creative analysis with media measurement addresses the industry’s need for more comprehensive performance evaluation that considers all campaign elements.
Addressing operational burdens
Despite the various economic pressures on consumers and business in general, Circana sees an opportunity to help brands and retailers navigate investment decisions more effectively through automated tools that reduce operational complexity while improving measurement consistency.
“How we do that at scale, how we do that to remove some of the operational burden. How we do that to move from insights to activation is of course going to be unleashed and unlocked through new tools, through new capabilities, through new user experiences and different layers of automation,” Pratt said.
Circana’s roadmap includes new releases over the next six to twelve months designed to decompose sales effects more holistically and consistently across different measurement scenarios.
Partnership positioning
Circana positions itself as an objective measurement partner in an environment where transparency and accountability have become increasingly important to advertisers and their agency partners. This approach differentiates the company in a crowded measurement landscape.
“We’re very focused on transparency, accountability, business performance, business impact, and there is no doubt that together we’re going to be able to provide more clarity to our advertising partners and to their agency partners as well,” Pratt said.
“This is a real opportunity and responsibility for us to be able to shine lights and identify the most purposeful investment to deliver business outcomes,” Pratt said.
