VOZ, Australia’s database that brings together viewing data for both linear TV and BVOD to provide all-screen, cross-platform planning and reporting for the television industry, is set to be a game changer and Nine is keen to lead the way.

After a few years in the making, VOZ was due to launch in April but then COVID-19 happened; preliminary data is now coming through but it will be October before official data is released, a recent digital conference organised by Mediatel heard.

The expectation is that when VOZ data becomes available to agencies this autumn, its primary use will be limited to that of a planning tool to measure current viewing and to measure the incremental reach.

They aren’t yet set up to cope with the huge increase in the volume of data that is coming, according to Michael Stephenson, chief sales officer at Nine. But the broadcaster has started a process of engagement with agencies as part of a longer-term ambition.

“We’re going to build a piece of technology that makes it easier to buy,” he told the conference. “You’ll be able to buy live linear, live streaming and video on demand, all from one platform across all of the television inventory sources that exist in Australia.”

Part of that evolution is the ability to be able to buy audiences across linear television and BVOD as well, he added. “And that’ll require, via OzTAM, for us to align on a range of audience segments as an industry, which we’re well down the path of doing, and then engaging with a number of third-party data suppliers who will fuel the data that we’re able to recognize as a result of those segments.”

There is currently a gap, he acknowledged, between television buyers, who buy television plus BVOD together and will use the VOZ database “to maximise the reach that they can extract from the market at any point in time”, and digital buyers who typically have bottom of the funnel objectives and use a DSP and the broadcaster’s first-party data for addressable solutions.

“I think over time these things do come together,” said Stephenson. “That’s the greyness that exists between where we are today and this future state where television becomes a platform in its own right.”

For more details, read WARC’s report: VOZ: Australia’s measurement revolution.

Sourced from WARC