Brands looking for more than clicks when it comes to metrics, says GroupM’s John Miskelly
In a webinar yesterday on Twitter’s investments in brand safety, Twitter’s head of global brand safety strategy Caitlin Rush discussed the alignment of brand values for brands, agencies and platforms in a fire-side chat with GroupM’s APAC investment director, John Miskelly.
Rush stated: “It’s almost as if we’re seeing the same conscious consumption habits we’re seeing on the general consumer side, coming over into media investing and buying. Brands and agencies are wanting to invest with the partners that they know [they have] shared values with.”
GroupM’s John Miskelly
Miskelly elaborated on that argument: “Advertisers and clients want to make sure they’re investing responsibly. I think if media is to evolve and reward publishers and platforms trying to do the right thing, everyone [needs] to crack measurement beyond clicks and acquisitions. GroupM globally, I’m sure a lot of people, hopefully, have recruited a responsible media framework to tackle this very issue.
“What we’re trying to do is beyond the performance metrics of clicks and acquisitions,” said Miskelley. “We want to factor other metrics into how we measure the quality of placements that prove that platforms and publishers that are doing the right thing from an environmental, social, and corporate governance perspective and making sure when we’re allocating dollars about from our clients, we’re factoring in that other than just the output, the cost per acquisition or cost per click.”
Miskelly further argued that: “It’s not enough just to build tools that enable advertisers to avoid harmful content.
“Clients are concerned that their investments in social platforms, whether they’re adjacent to the harmful content or not, need to make sure that these platforms, clients feel they’re supporting their brand values.”
Miskelley continued: “From a platform perspective, clients want to make sure that they’re doing as much as they can just to try and get rid of these sort of things off the platform altogether rather than just putting the tools together for it.”
Twitter’s Caitlin Rush
On the balance between Twitter being brand safe and being overly restrictive towards public discourse, Twitter’s Rush said: “Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation and we want to enable and support robust debate and healthy discourse and dialogue as part of that conversation.
“We believe that you should be able to speak your mind and find credible information easily. And Twitter being an open service that is home to a world of diverse people and perspectives and ideas can make that challenging. There can be times where we need to balance prioritising open public discourse and safety.
“We are committed to continuing this work so that everyone can feel confident and comfortable sharing their voice while having a safe environment to do so without being overly restrictive.”
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