Cannes Lions 2025: How Cross-Media Measurement Empowers Buyers and Sellers in a Fragmented Media World

Media consumption is expanding across more channels, making it harder for media buyers to maximise reach and efficiency and a different game for media sellers to prove the value of their inventory. In this panel, we brought together people from both sides of the fence – advertisers, agencies and media owners – to explore how cross-media measurement can solve these challenges and create new growth opportunities.

Fragmentation and Frustration

Ulla: Fragmentation has changed the way we operate. It has led us to not think about media channels, but rather about the customer journey. I think it’s a very good path for the business.

Teemu: What if the fragmentation is a feature and not a bug? Sometimes, we treat fragmentation as a bad thing. Fragmentation has pushed the industry to have the right content, the right measurement, and the right tools. We can be more precise without creating more work and improving the media, so it’s a good feature for the coming years.

Richard: We’ve always dealt with fragmentation. It has been a primary part of what we do since it helps us get artists’ videos seen by as many people as possible, across as many devices and screens as possible. You have to lean into where audiences watch their content, which is how we effectively do business. With fragmentation happening everywhere, we now more easily have a conversation about the content and not about the platform. A music video premiere is still the same music video whether it is watched on YouTube or Samsung TV Plus.

Buyer vs. Seller – What Each Side Needs

Teemu: I usually start by asking: How do I understand the overall reach, and especially the incremental reach? That’s the starting point for understanding how to reach the consumer. The second part is measuring whether our ads are being seen. The third one is econometric modelling. We need the model to see where audiences actually come from, and several companies in Finland are working with marketing mix modelling.

Richard: Ultimately, you want to lean into whatever your customer wants and how they want to measure it. You want to have a third-party verification of what’s happened. And that’s generally how we approach it. We’re getting led by the buyer, and if they want to use certain types of measurement, we will do as much as we can to ensure that happens. Ultimately, one of the problems we have with fragmentation is that we distribute across many platforms, and we have to rely on each one doing the right thing to enable that overall reach and dissemination.

Bart: In a way, it helps that we launched our own service a little over a year ago. When you start from zero, you can set everything up the way you want it to be. So that starts with transparency and allowing every advertiser to measure what they do and how they do that. The problem typically is that it’s not possible for advertisers to measure performance across different platforms and we still operate in siloes. I think that’s the main issue that we have in this industry. I can be open, but if others aren’t, how much value does it add?

The Role of Cross-Media Measurement

Richard: We have two sides to cross-media measurement. First, we need to ensure that we can measure everything within our network – have one source of truth across YouTube, Samsung, and Rakuten, and give customers a reach curve of that content. Second, we must be aware that we are one publisher on a media plan. Therefore, we must understand how to tie everything together. How do you know what Vevo is contributing to that media plan overall? Having one source of truth to be able to say this is crucial for us.

Teemu: I honestly don’t know how I would plan without cross-media measurement. We need the measurement to create campaign plans that deliver growth. That’s a simple understanding of the reach, the reach curves, and how they develop. We can see, for example, where we are overinvesting and where we are underinvesting, and in that way, deliver better media planning.

Bart: When I hear the word cross-media measurement, I think it’s a utopia. We’ve been discussing cross-media measurement for years and still haven’t made any significant progress. This is why I think the work that AudienceProject is doing is really important. Independent cross-media measurement is what we all need to lean into and what we need to ensure is embraced. However, there are different currencies in use – generating identifiers that bring broadcast streaming video and everything else together in one ecosystem is already inherently difficult. We should all strive to find a common currency – at least try to share the same level of data and provide that level of transparency for the advertisers to start understanding how each channel adds value.

Success Stories and Tangible Impact

Richard: First of all, someone independently being able to measure YouTube was really important because then you can focus the conversations on the fact that you’re a publisher reaching audiences. We have now gotten into the scenario where AudienceReport can split us out as Vevo – inclusive of YouTube – and we can start to group that content as a buyer. For example, working with Omnicom Media Group in the UK, we can point out if the content meets the TV criteria, regardless of how it’s being watched, and compare that content versus other parts of the video component of a media plan. Still, different campaigns can be used in various ways, where content happens to be consumed in other ways, and it’s been essential for us to go out with that message and start singling out our content in that way.

Ulla: Without cross-media measurement, it’s only guessing. It’s a very business-critical part of our marketing, allowing me to speak with our CFO without having a difficult conversation. We discuss different investment scenarios: If we save money on this, how does it affect our turnover this year? How does it affect our numbers? Then we discuss a path of action we are both happy with.

Teemu: We had a very complex case with a client who had a very short sales campaign. When talking about a campaign period of three or four days, you have to dig deep and understand how to reach enough people, as you only have a few days. You don’t have three or four weeks. That’s when we looked into which channels performed best, even if they weren’t that common in the media landscape. We focused on the channels that performed well (MMM) and delivered satisfactory reach figures. That’s all that matters. That’s one particular case, where we saw incremental growth in our sales campaign, just by changing a few channels with better ones.

Barriers to Adoption

Bart: Suppose you look at all of the different ecosystems that exist today. In that case, it’s very hard to understand how OEMs, broadcasters, telcos, streaming partners, and everyone else in that ecosystem can start working together. However, I do think there is a way forward. The data is there, we’re just not combining it or just not breaking those silos because the reward is not there for the players in those ecosystems. So the hardest part is trying to bring everyone together.

Teemu: It is spot on that we need to work much closer together. We need to push those boundaries, break those silos, and be a bit more transparent. I definitely agree with those challenges that we have. I don’t think it’s a utopia. I think we can solve this.

Richard: We have never hesitated about measuring, because there is nothing to hide. That should be the attitude of any media owner. Ultimately, the value of your content is there to be seen, and your scale is there to be seen. It’s just trying to find that common currency that can pull it all together. It is also important that content is valued because it costs money to make it. So, if we get to a place where everything is about impressions, that’s not the world we want to live in either, and that’s where planners and buyers come in and start to prove their worth because there is value in a premium spot on RTL. There is also value in high-quality content that exists on YouTube. Trying to make sure we make the best of that is really important.

Looking Ahead – From Conflict to Collaboration

Ben: If we could do something tomorrow to make cross-media measurement more impactful, for me, it would be about adding more channels. We need to be able to compare out-of-home to digital to gaming, so I think there should be more channels.

Bart: One common currency across all of our different silos and, ultimately, transparency. If we can find one common currency, whether that be an identifier, whether that be on a binding method, whatever it might be, that’s the ultimate goal for me.

Ulla: Decisions are based on money. If we change our mindset so that measurement would be a decision tool, not a reporting tool, then change could happen. So, measurement is a part of the planning and optimisation process.

Teemu: More channels with a more unified common language, and investing in building that.

Richard: It’s really just an open dialogue, and there are now some challenging conversations about trying to do the right thing. So that open collaboration can move things in the right direction. So that our own platforms no longer restrict us, and we can actually just sell based on how the viewer is dictating how they want to watch rather than being stuck in artificial tech silos.

Learn more

Watch the session below to learn more about how cross-media measurement can unlock new opportunities for growth, collaboration, and trust. And if you are interested in learning more about how cross-media measurement can help you get the most value from your media investments or inventory, please fill out the contact form below.