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Unilever is finally getting Facebook, Google and Twitter to bend on ad measurement - but it won't have much impact unless other brands get on board
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Unilever is finally getting Facebook, Google and Twitter to bend on ad measurement - but it won't have much impact unless other brands get on board

Unilever CMO Keith Weed

Christian Alminana/Getty Images for Cannes Lions

Unilever CMO Keith Weed

  • Unilever is creating a cross-measurement initiative with tech and measurement companies to help it understand how its ads perform across platforms.
  • CMO Keith Weed told Business Insider he hopes Unilever's involvement with the World Federation of Advertisers will get other marketers to join the effort.
  • Unilever's efforts may have limited impact unless other brands follow its lead, though.

Unilever says that it's making headway on getting the "walled gardens" to work together.

For the past year, Unilever has been running a pilot program with some of its brands to compare how their ads perform across Facebook, Google, and Twitter. And earlier this week, it rolled out a more formal initiative to apply the learnings from its tests to measure digital ads. The cross-measurement effort fits into a larger initiative called the Digital Responsibility Framework that Unilever launched last year to focus on brand safety, measurement, and verification.

Unilever has been pushing for more transparency into its advertising buys for several years. CMO Keith Weed has been vocal in asking social platforms to make it easier to measure ad performance - specifically when it comes to creating a consistent metric that tracks reach and frequency of ads.

The packaged-goods giant behind brands like Lipton and Dove is working with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), Facebook, Google, Twitter, Nielsen, and Kantar Media to create the cross-media measurement model. Luis Di Como, EVP of global media at Unilever, said that the model will help in three areas:

  • Getting unduplicated reach so an advertiser can zero in on a single platform's audience.
  • Examining user behavior by platform.
  • Eventually measuring stats like brand preference and sales.

"The topic of cross-media measurement requires a systematic solution for the whole industry," Como said. "This will benefit, at the end, the consumer. The consumer will not be bombarded with the same messages because we are going to be able to understand unduplicated reach, but more importantly, the impact that we are getting in each of the platforms."

Unilever's goal is to create a measurement standard it can use across markets. The effort fits with Unilever's move over the past couple of years to cut its ad budgets and the number of agencies it works with.

Read more: Unilever's Keith Weed says the company's sustainable brands are delivering 70% of its growth

"Because you can't optimize the reach and frequency across the platforms, we can end up over-serving in one area, which is a negative thing because it means that we're spending money that we don't want to because it's not very effective," Weed said. "More recently, people are talking more about cross-measurement. I think the time is now right to bring it to the industry."

Unilever's learnings are limited in scope

In a recent interview with Business Insider, Facebook's Brad Smallwood, VP of marketing science, said the company is open to sharing some of its advertising data with other platforms and suggested that Nielsen could serve as a neutral, third party to anonymize and hash the data.

He said the challenge is getting brands to speak up with specific measurement asks that are similar to Unilever's.

"We need focus," Smallwood said. "When you get a whole bunch of [people] together and say, 'What do you want,' everybody wants the kitchen sink. If the ask is too broad, then the timing draws on. The specific ask is the key."

Weed argued that the biggest challenge with cross-platform measurement is getting multiple platforms on the same page. While Unilever has some learnings about the reach and frequency of its digital ads, the results are limited to a pilot program in a few markets. More importantly, the tests have not been able to measure ads' impact on sales. Reach and frequency primarily measure brand awareness and if someone viewed an ad.

Weed added that he's confident that the platforms will remain open to discussions.

"Here we are a year later, and we've made some really meaningful progress," he said. "There are some positive stories out there despite some of the challenges we hear elsewhere."

Unilever and rival Procter & Gamble are two of the world's biggest advertisers: In 2017, P&G spent $10 billion in advertising, followed by Unilever with $7 billion. With more marketers asking for transparency in their digital advertising, Weed and P&G's chief brand officer Marc Pritchard have become two of the most vocal marketers asking digital players to provide comparable stats across platforms as part of a larger push for advertising transparency.

Both brands have succesfully whittled down ad spend and pushed the platforms to become more open, but they only represent two of the millions of advertisers, and it's not clear how much other brands have followed Unilever's footsteps. So its measurement progress may not benefit the broader advertising industry.

Asked if he's talked to other brands about the company's measurement efforts, Weed said that he hopes Unilever's involvement with a big trade organization like the WFA will attract others.

In fact, Unilever has intentionally left its agencies out of the process and is working directly with the WFA, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Nielsen and Kantar Media. However, Unilever's agencies will be able to see the initial learnings from the program to help with future media buying.

"We believe that the biggest thing we needed to do was crack this with Google, Facebook and Twitter and make sufficient progress - we're not there yet - but we could then have a more meaningful conversation," Weed said. "The difficult thing that we're going to do now is hand over that leadership to the WFA - then it becomes an industry initiative rather than a Unilever initiative."