On this week’s episode of TheMadTech Podcast, Patrick Kelly, head of digital, ITV, joins ExchangeWire’s Anne-Marie Sheedy and Mat Broughton to discuss the latest news in media, marketing, and commerce.

This week they cover:

- Almost a third of TV ads play to empty rooms, according to research from the University of Delaware and the University of California. The study — “How Viewer Tuning, Presence and Attention Respond to Ad Content and Predict Brand Search Lift” — analysed four million ad exposures over a 12-month period, and tracked ad viewership using tools to measure viewer presence in the room and focal attention on the screen. The research team used technology from TVision Insights, a TV performance metrics company, to passively monitor people in a room and determine whether they actually watched what was on screen, without breaching the privacy of the viewers.

The study also found that younger viewers are four times more likely to leave the room or shift their visual attention (such as to a mobile phone) than to change the channel while ads played on screen. Furthermore, the research concluded that ad viewing behaviours vary depending on a number of factors, including channel, programme genre, time of day, viewer age, and viewer gender. 

The study sought to measure how frequently TV viewers would immediately look up a brand or product online after seeing their ad (referred to as ‘brand search uplift’), a metric that the industry’s standard measurement systems do not currently take into account. The research adds to increased discourse on the need for advertisers to be able to effectively measure the frequently elusive yet vital metric that is consumer attention, a need which members of the research team assert is not being met by leading measurement firms.

- IAB Europe will appeal the Belgian Data Protection Authority’s (APD) ruling that the standard-setting organisation is a joint controller for profiling and other data processing carried out by Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) vendors in OpenRTB. The IAB will dispute the “controversial” administrative ruling in the Belgian Market Court.

IAB Europe CEO Townsend Feehan said that the APD’s decision “is based on a misunderstanding of the facts and a misapplication of the law”, asserting that the IAB will appeal on the basis that “it cannot be the intention of the European legislator that a body like ours should bear legal responsibility for the data processing activities of an entire industry”.  

Feehan also expressed concern that the ruling could put other industry bodies off of developing or becoming involved with solutions that seek to ensure legislative compliance within the industry. Despite this, IAB Europe maintain that they are looking forward to working with ADP and other regulators to make TCF functional, with the goal of getting the framework approved as a transnational GDPR Code of Conduct. The body also rejects renewed calls by some organisations for advertisers to stop using the TCF and OpenRTB.

- Walgreens Advertising Group (WAG) have announced the launch of their own self-serve programmatic and clean room solution. The new offering will enable brands to apply audiences based on Walgreens’ first-party data to campaigns being run on their DSP of choice in order to target consumers. 

The US-based healthcare, pharmaceutical, and retail giant’s myWalgreens rewards program currently boasts over 95 million members, and the company claim to rack up around one billion consumer touch points daily. As such, WAG promise that the new services will help advertisers “maximise the reach and scale of campaigns across all digital channels” with “more than 70 key categories and advanced customer targets” to draw on.

Powered by Epsilon, the new services will be rolled out in Q2, and will be accessible via The Trade Desk or OpenX, with the company planning to add more partners in the future. In a press release, WAG emphasised their focus on conserving consumer privacy, stating that the service was designed with “best-in-class safety guardrails” and that they opted to use “the Trade Desk solution as it leverages audiences stripped of directly identifiable information”.