James Robertson, Founder & Senior VP Market Development at Effective Measure International. Here he gives some insight into adoption of digital measurement in the region, its effect on the digital space and the role played by Effective Measure.

The pace of change in the digital sphere is accelerating in the APAC region, is digital measurement keeping up?

There is no doubt globally that digital measurement has challenges that it has to overcome and keep working at. The proliferation of people having multiple devices to access the internet with, including the rise of tablet computing and increased smartphone usage certainly adds to that challenge of being able to measure a digital individual. The multiplicity of digital environments that a consumer engages with at any one time will constantly shift and measurement needs to be agile enough to keep pace.

As an industry I believe we are certainly keeping up, but digital measurement is a constantly moving target. I would like to say that as an industry we are innovating to stay ahead of the game, but I feel the current status quo is that we keep up with what is becoming mainstream today, not necessarily looking at what that will be in the next 6 – 18 months.

Measuring an individual across multiple digital touch points such as mobile, PC’s, smartphone and tablet to create a unified measure is certainly achievable, but is not without its challenges. Across the emerging digital markets such Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, that is something that Effective Measure continues to work extremely hard towards continuously evolving.

A people metric that encompasses the unique aspects and strengths of each digital touch point, but ultimately brings it back to a single, tradable metric for digital, which is people, is incredibly important to building confidence in the medium.

What are the fundamental problems with online measurement today in emerging markets?

All forms of media measurement, not just digital, have their challenges. Digital is certainly very complex, due to the number of different ways and different devices people use to engage with the channel compared to other media such a TV or print.

One of the largest challenges with online measurement today, certainly in the emerging markets, is that we are largely conditioned to looking at outputs, such as clicks, impressions, visitors, and engagement. While these are very important as a measure of continual improvement, I don’t believe we should be using these measures to also evaluate the medium, especially from a branding advertising perspective.

As an online measurement industry we need to move towards creating metrics which are ultimately comparable with other forms of media, such as a GRP (Gross Ratings Point). By providing an advertiser with a GRP or similar for their digital advertising is not only more familiar to them, but also provides a much richer demonstration in terms of the campaigns ability to reach the target market.

How is the lack of standardized metrics keeping online advertising from reaching its full potential?

By and large, there are standard metrics and definitions for digital measurement, which the majority of measurement vendors support and adopt throughout their platforms.

I’d like to see the industry move more towards providing measures that are more inline and conducive to growing the spend of branding dollars online, such as GRP, witch is how advertisers evaluate other media such as TV, which is incredibly popular across the world, especially in the developing markets and continues to see the lions share of ad expenditure.

At Effective Measure, we have been at the forefront of rolling out both Campaign Measurement and Impact feature sets across the developing markets, as we strongly believe this style of evaluation for digital advertising is the key to helping advertisers and brands become more comfortable with spending more brand dollars online.

You are charged with driving growth in new markets, which regions do you see leading the charge in progressive approaches?

Certainly all of the markets that Effective Measure operates across including Oceania, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa are leading the charge by adopting and supporting transparency into the digital medium and a system.

It’s traditionally thought that the developed markets are traditionally seen as the markets which should lead innovation, but more and more I believe the developing markets are embracing new digital technology more so than the developed markets.

For Effective Measure, I expect the Asia Pacific region to drive a lot of the innovation in terms of approaches and products/features, as it’s population is not only incredibly large, but the way in which people access and consume content differs market to market

Which markets in Asia did you see as taking the innovative approaches to online measurement and why?

I can only comment on the markets where Effective Measure has a presence, but I have been incredibly impressed with all 6 countries we operate in extensively across South East Asia in terms of accepting and supporting our innovative approach to digital measurement.

The methodology that Effective Measure has put in place comprises mobile, tablet and PC, as well as multiple locations of access, such as home, work and internet cafes. This is not only comprehensive, but also vital for markets such as the Philippines where there is a real mix of how people get online, if we were to just use a panel meter, we’d be missing out on a large portion of the population and how people engage with digital.

For me, Malaysia holds a special place in our company history, as it was the first market in South East Asia to get together and select Effective Measure as the official currency for Digital Measurement, which at the time, was our first endorsement by an Industry globally and the first such endorsement within the South East Asia Region as a whole.

Effective Measure launched in the emerging markets and gained a lot of traction quickly, what can the developed markets learn from that?

My belief is that developed markets can often tend to be less innovative and less willing to support new and emerging technologies for digital, especially when it comes to measurement. I put this down largely in part the phenomenal success these markets such as Australia have had in turning digital into a 4 billion dollar a year Industry. With this in mind, I can certainly understand why then that perhaps they adopt a cautious mentality of if ‘it aint broken, don’t fix it’. I think there is definitely room even in a market such as Australia to be innovative and absolutely continue to get advertisers excited and spending more money digital, no doubt about that.

The emerging markets however are starting from a much smaller base and can see the dollar signs off into the distance, e.g. the developed 4 billion dollar a year industry such as Australia.

I do believe that the emerging markets whilst harder to execute due to a variety of reasons, such as economics, language and infrastructure, are more willing to support and come on a journey, such as with Effective Measure, as we try to galvanise the industry and get people excited and spending more dollars online, so naturally anything that supports that goal, should largely supported by the Industry which is what we’ve seen.

You founded Effective Measure after an international career in online measurement with Red Sheriff Nielsen, what motivated you to launch a competitive solution?

I’ve always been incredibly passionate about digital and digital measurement in particular, especially across the emerging markets. Having worked across both developed and developing markets, I knew that by providing rich insight about the consumers of the medium across the board, it’s far easier to grow the market than by not having the insight, as people need something to be excited about, especially advertisers with a new medium.

In 2004 we sold Red Sheriff to Nielsen and as part of that process I was very confident that the innovative Red Sheriff products would be up and running and supported as strong pillars of the Nielsen offering for developing markets such as Asia Pacific.

Fast forward to 2008 and I think we’d all agree, that as the digital industry, we witnessed relatively stagnant growth for many years of Digital Ad Ex across Asia Pacific and still a very real lack of quality information into the consumer of the medium.

I felt incredibly excited about starting a company with a blank canvass, to not only address existing challenges with measuring these markets, but also to operate in a respectful way in terms of client investment and support. We worked incredibly hard and close with each of the stakeholders in the market to get everybody together, including media owners, advertising agencies and brands, and together, we started to talk about what are the key drivers in how we grow the industry, certainly insight and data into the market was crucial to each of the stakeholders.

Ultimately I want Effective Measure to be a part of the story of growing digital spend across developing markets, so developing a world class measurement product and methodology in Australia and taking it to the Middle East as our first market is something that both myself and the entire Effective Measure team are incredibly proud of.