Instead of “iterating on media plans year over year,” companies should take a fresh look and contemplate how they would build a new brand today and before deciding how to go to market,.

“And I think that is one of the best learnings that a marketer can get today from those direct to consumer brands,” says Hofstetter, who joined Comscore as President in October of 2018 from the 360i agency.

Citing the “migration to the big screen,” she notes the “migration to the big screen” and the need to consider the various ways that consumers are receiving content.

Direct-to-consumer marketers would take the approach of an “if I were inventing that brand today point of view. How can I get the same kind of targeting and measurability from TV that I was getting from digital. And I think they’re doing a fantastic job.”

While first-party data is more important than ever for engaging with customers, Hofstetter says it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition.

“It’s really fun to work with companies that have richer data sets, but they’re not necessarily nearly as necessary depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. Yes, they have tremendous rich data sets, and that’s great for targeting.

“But I would say the vast amount of data that’s available today actually can be used to help target no matter what you have. I think there are a lot of big companies today that are short on first-party data, and it doesn’t necessarily put them at a disadvantage if they think about it the right way.”

While she attends CES in part to help elevate the Comscore brand, the annual event lets people think more out of the box.

“When you’re here, you get to take out the craziness of the day to day. You have an opportunity to really take a fresh look at your business and think ‘I probably need a more modern approach to how I’m looking at my data from a planning, executing and measurement perspective,’ and the receptivity has been wonderful.”

This video is part of Beet.TV coverage of CES 2019.   The series is sponsored by NBCUniversal.  For more coverage, please visit this page. 

In this interview with Beet.TV roughly a month into her new role at the measurement company, Hofstetter talks about Comcore’s doubling down on offerings like its Comscore Campaign Ratings and what’s needed to move cross-platform unification ahead.

“The question that has been brewing has really been a big question on the buy side. There have been silos. There’s TV buying, there’s digital buying and then there’s that premium that sits in that purgatory in between,” says Hofstetter, who until September of 2018 was Chairwoman of marketing agency 360i.

“Consequently, media partners have tried to aligned themselves to the buyers. So we’ve had a little bit of a breakdown in the ecosystem and that has inhibited a lot of the movement towards looking at video more cross-platform.”

Measurement providers want to see things go cross-platform, “but the buy-side’s not always organized for that,” she adds.

“I think the more we can get better video, better targeting, better cross platform, better de-duplication, the more we’ll be able to proliferate and help advance that.”

In speaking with marketers, media partners and agencies, Hofstetter has found that “everybody has their own perception of what Comscore is and what they do. And if I just say we’re here to bring trust and transparency to media and marketing to use data to drive growth, that is true but it doesn’t explain the how.

“So I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us, call it in the next six months, to better educate the marketplace on who we are, the benefits that we provide and then bring that to market and deliver on the promises.”

This video is part the Beet.TV preview series “The Road to CES 2019.” The series is presented by dataxu. For more videos, please visit this page.

But ad buyers are still split across the two traditional worlds, and that is curtailing ad spending, according to an ex ad agency boss who now oversees digital media measurement.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Comscore president Sarah Hofstetter, who recently joined after being US CEO of 360i, shares how one of her first observations, after jumping the fence, has frustrated her.

“There have been silos,” she says. “There’s TV buying (on the one hand), there’s digital buying (on the other), and then there’s that premium that sits in that purgatory in between. And so, consequently, media partners have tried to align themselves to the buyers.

“The measurement folks want to see things cross-platform, but the buy side’s not always organized for that. “We’ve had a little bit of a breakdown in the ecosystem, and that has inhibited a lot of the movement towards looking at video (in a) more cross-platform (fashion).”

Pushed somewhat by both buy and sell side, media measurers like comScore and Nielsen have been in a race to offer holistic cross-media measurement metrics.

Hofstetter says she wants better cross-platform video targeting to help drive ad buyer structures that encourage video spend across online and TV-like formats.

She says she wants to use the next six months to “better reeducate” the marketplace on Comscore’s offerings.