Google Australia and New Zealand managing director Jason Pellegrino has urged the media industry to think beyond platforms, calling for collaboration in measuring audiences, in an opinion piece for The Australian.
In the piece, Pellegrino emphasises that platforms can be complementary, with it being “content rather than platform that drives our viewing decisions”.
“While the industry may be preoccupied with a platform-based debate, viewers have moved beyond this and are more concerned about the content they want to watch and their viewing experience,” he writes.
“No one platform or channel can capture all audiences, all the time. When it comes to reaching viewers, the best marketers follow their audience. They know that TV has a role to play, so does online video, social media, radio, print and outdoor as part of a marketing mix.”
The manner in which Australians consume video content has changed rapidly over the past few years amid the growth of streaming and with mobile access providing greater choice than ever across various platforms.
This, in turn, has created challenges for advertisers seeking to reach audiences.
In The Australian piece, Pellegrino notes that “advertising has always been skippable”, with the challenge being to capture “attention and arming marketers with the information they need to understand people’s rapidly changing viewing habits”.
“Current industry measurement is struggling to keep up with the changing behaviours of audiences and they make it difficult to compare across platforms,” he writes.
“We need to work together across platforms to achieve a method of better measuring audience across screens.”
