Why we’re all-in on Independent Measurement and Monitoring
2022 is set to be the biggest year yet for the streaming industry. As the dust settles from a year of mega ad tech IPOs and acquisitions, plus the coming of age of streaming platforms, 2022 is the year the industry has to get back to business. That’s why we, at Watching That, are all-in on providing independent measurement and monitoring solutions.
The audience shift to streaming is all but complete with the last bastion of TV starting to come online. The business fundamentals of the entire OTT landscape have transformed to now being addressable, biddable and measurable. And the once Pangea-like shape of video distribution, where one EPG ruled them all, has fragmented into billions of shards of always-on individual devices and access points.
We’re no longer in the middle of the storm. It has passed leaving the industry irrevocably changed in an almost unrecognisable way, filled with a host of new opportunities and challenges. None bigger than the need to figure out how to measure anything and monitor everything that is going on.
If the digital revolution has given us anything, it is data: the ability to look back over the past with such detail that we can almost relive it. Data now emits in the digital universe like light does in the physical one. Operators, traders, planners, editors, developers and everyone in between can now understand exactly what is happening and better decide what actions to take in the future by being able to recreate and replay the past in almost original detail.
To do this, however, they need to be able to measure the state of everything and combine those measurements into an ongoing sequence (like key frames in a video) to monitor what is going on and learn from their actions, getting them to where they’re going as quickly and effortlessly as possible. A devilishly hard problem to solve right, but if you can solve it then then the industry will have overcome some major hurdles to sustained growth.
Watching That is taking this challenge head on:
#1 We are evangelising and educating on how to get the most out of your data.
There is no school or academic course you can take to learn the fundamentals; we are all learning on the job and the WT team is working hard to partner with our customers and the entire industry to share our learnings and knowledge.
#2 We are championing the need to integrate monitoring and measurement into a unified ‘way of doing business’.
You can’t monitor anything without consistent and frequent measuring, and you can’t know what to measure without understanding what you need to monitor in your business. They are yin and yang and, as such, we believe the solution is an integrated one.
Everything we are doing in our product innovation and engineering efforts is solely focused on solving the problems and challenges at the intersection of measurement and monitoring.
#3 We are taking an external and independent position in the market.
Perspective is everything, and right now the industry is looking at itself from the “inside out”. Data is currently supplied by the actors and doers of the tech stack; rather than from the right way round.
It is falling victim to an existential conflict of interest: who’s “truth” is true? Across the board the pressure is mounting to at least find some solution to the `measurement and monitoring` problem. This is leading to desperate action and instances of “marking their own homework” are on the rise, with dire consequences.
It is certainly not easy to take an independent position in this market but we are going to do just that; from how we price our services, to how we collect data while retaining neutrality, independence is a commandment in our decision making.
#4 We are going to facilitate and opine rather than dictate the future of measurement and monitoring.
There are really smart people working on this problem set and we want to facilitate those ideas as well as add our own to the mix. We will certainly carry many informed opinions but we will keep out of the way of how our customers want to do business. This means we will support all formats, currencies, processes and ideas that we practically can.
In our vision for the future there is no “one ring that rules them all”. Diversity abounds in life and so it should in our industry and solutions. So we are building technology that prioritises collaboration, correlation and cohabitation of data from any source, including filling the gaps as we go. If we get it right all measurement points and currencies, all system and business monitoring workflows and all data perspectives will be available and at your fingertips in the right way, at the right time.
#5 We’re going to leverage the best technology has to offer and invent some as we go
When we see a prominent brand advertising a specialist job role that requires “advanced Excel skills”, we get mad. It means we have more work to do in helping show what state-of-the-art technology can do for our customers and our industry. Our lives are hard enough already and to just make them harder unnecessarily is almost criminal.
Our approach will always be to push the envelope of technology. To make it serve us not the other way around. We love Excel but it doesn’t have a place in the future of this industry. It’s not too far off the truth to say that close to $100 Billion dollars a year is trade off Excel spreadsheets! How much more could that be if fit for purpose tools and platforms were available? We are on a mission to find out.
So, to conclude, our promise to you is that Watching That will work tirelessly to empower and enable our industry to make the most of the streaming revolution by striving to provide the best monitoring and measurement solution possible. We know what it takes, and we know we have what it takes.
That’s why we are all-in.
