Sue Haas: Measuring Canadian Media Consumption

Matt Cundill  0:00  
So you stepped into a role at numerous back in July. What is the relationship between numerous and endlogic? And has it changed?

Sue Haas  0:08  
Great question. Yes, it has changed, I would say, even since I started the job at edlogic in April 2023, one of the mandates of myself coming on was to create a closer synergy between the two businesses, and really break down the internal silos, because the communication was not as strong as that could be, both internally between teams, and we did have duplication of teams, so for example, two product teams, which wasn't very efficient, but mostly externally. We wanted to improve the process so clients didn't have to ask a data question to numerous and then be thrown to the end logic team, because it actually was very specific to a software issue and vice versa. So we've been working on that for a while. And I would say my new role, my chief growth officer, announcement, over the summer, was solidifying that, and me being across both of those businesses moving forward. And you know that I was interim CEO for a little while, for 10 months, which was a crazy job, and that also helped accelerate so me stepping back to just end logic didn't quite make sense after that stint, so it was just all positive in the right direction, because we were planning to move the two companies closer together anyways, and then me overseeing numerous for 10 Months help speed that along.

Matt Cundill  1:21  
So you're the chief growth officer. Now, TV and radio have been traditional clients, and they're obvious clients, and have been for many years. But where's the new business going to come from?

Sue Haas  1:30  
Yes, great question. So my big focus so we launched our cross media national data set known as vam, video audience measurement, October 6, so it's been in market. Are you aware of

Matt Cundill  1:41  
it? Matt, we had a long talk about vam on the last episode and what to expect. Yeah,

Sue Haas  1:47  
we did, just in case you remember it. That's just a little trivia from last time. So yes, that officially launched October 6, and in lead up, I've been pitching the pure play streamers in particular to join that data set. So I'm hoping I don't have news today, unfortunately, but I if we would have done this another week from now, there would be, I think, news in the press with our first pure play to join, which is great, and the momentum of launching October 6 and having our first sign up almost a month later, you know, we're really proud of that, and I'll continue to be onboarding streamers as we move forward. These are names that you you know well in the market that would be the first bucket of new clients. In addition to the streamers, the global streamers would be we're also targeting global social digital platforms that run a lot of video and also ad tech, so companies like fine cast, MIQ, magnite, are obvious places that we would go to subscribe and participate in this data set. So part of it is a subscription, if it makes sense by that. I mean, like, if we can land on terms, there would be a subscription of the data. But what we're really hoping for is an integration of first party data into the VAM data set. That's a road map that we will work on with all of our clients.

Matt Cundill  3:05  
Yeah, I feel like last year we were talking a lot about the future, a lot about video as it was beginning to explode. We talked a little bit about, you know, in podcasting, for instance, a lot of people start to include video and and how do we create that, that attribution? And you know, out comes vam. And at the same time, I make a move out east, and I completely rewire my house in order to to accommodate streaming. And it's a it's a different world from just having a cable box and scrolling through and looking for something to watch on TV, as opposed to hooking into, you know, tsn.ca, or sports net, or to zone or city TV or global and stack and CTV, and we're looking for ways to count, and now you've come up with the ways that we can count, right?

Sue Haas  3:48  
Bam. And I would have said this in the last podcast to say it simply is a data set that's covering what Canadians watch on video across any device, on any screen and all the platforms. So we really are trying to cover it all, including, as I as I just mentioned, the social players. So if you're watching, well, YouTube's not really classified as social, but definitely covers YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram reels, etc. So it's really video as a whole. And for that, we're trying to speak to any content creator, because you are competing in that space. And you and I've talked about this before, even if you have episodic, longer form video, you can be competing with very micro, short video for ad dollars. And those budgets are still siloed on the agency side, but they are starting to combine more and more, and that's what I'm hearing from our agency clients, like an all in video budget, and we want to be able to provide the data that matches how video is bought and sold.

Matt Cundill  4:45  
So that sounds like a lot of phony nonsense and noise, until you realize one thing, and that's that on Saturday night, I made a decision to watch television, and couldn't find what I wanted to watch, and wound up watching YouTube. And YouTube is now in the bedrooms and the app is now. Sitting alongside Netflix. It's sitting alongside Apple TV, and it's sitting alongside Disney. But I spent my whole night watching YouTube, and I felt like it would curate to me better than those other apps. Big search engine knows what I want to watch, which is Spanish tapas and food videos. I was

Sue Haas  5:19  
going to ask you, were you watching creator driven content, or were you watching creator driven content? I mean, to be honest, I watch a lot of YouTube. I watch more exercise videos, also creator driven but when I go, when I want to watch what I would call and I do think the definition of premium is very subjective, but for me, it's sort of that HBO style quality, like high end production, more intense storylines. I like dramas and crime shows. I will go to the names that I know, like I don't normally. Will go to YouTube for that experience, but it is frustrating trying to find something to watch. We all go through it. I wish the van data set was fixing that problem, but unfortunately, this discoverability of what to find. We haven't fixed that for you.

Matt Cundill  6:03  
I'm glad you mentioned that word, because it's actually something that gnaws on me quite a bit. Oh, there's a discoverability problem in podcasting. Oh, there's a discoverability problem on something, something I'm not sure that's the app's fault, and I'm not sure it's the platform's fault, isn't it? Come down to how well you market what's available. Podcasting might not have a discoverability problem, but your particular show might have a discoverability problem.

Sue Haas  6:26  
It's a marketing thing. Yeah, so obviously, not all podcasters are going to have a lot a high marketing budget to market their episodes. And how do you get in front of more people? There's organic ways to market. I think, you know, endorsements, Contra deals, you know, again, that's not my area of expertise, but I think it is a it is a challenge, and we all waste a lot of time browsing through trying to find something good, like before you and I connected at llogic. I didn't know of sound off, so there's an example for you. I wouldn't have, I didn't go to sound off and listen or watch it when I was prepping even to take on the job, because I didn't know about it. But it would have been nice if I did know about it.

Matt Cundill  7:10  
I think the big takeaway that I have with vam and the work that you do is that even though I've made changes in my life that involve a lot of streaming, maybe there's some cord cutters out there, but those people are now being counted, and everyone's being counted, is that right?

Sue Haas  7:25  
That's right. It's covering 95% of platforms in the Canadian market. So we are trying to capture all content providers and platforms, and actually we are adding more every day, because there are so many as you dig down and get into the smaller online video websites, etc, but we are capturing that it's online video. It's streaming video from the pure plays. Obviously, we know those big platforms. It's what we call B VOD, from the broadcasters, and that includes their app streaming as well as online streaming. So if you're a CPC, for example, we cover jam. We'd also cover any video on cbc.ca. What we haven't done yet, and I was actually just discussing with com score this last week, they're a partner of ours, is being able to attribute content on, say, Tiktok that CBC back to CBC. We haven't, we haven't done that yet, but we are capturing Tiktok on its own, but we will get there eventually, where we're attributing viewership by content owner back to their bucket.

Matt Cundill  8:25  
That would be fascinating to know, because I think there's a big debate about, well, if you put it on Tiktok and you promote it, there are people leaving and connecting back to its source.

Sue Haas  8:36  
Yeah, and it's a lot of work for the content owners, the platform owners broadcasters, to do all that math on their end and cobble together and put into PowerPoints and presentations the full scope and breadth of what your viewership is. And it's an attribution issue. We find this on a another area that we're really working on to optimize over time for vam is there's a lot of content being distributed on Amazon Prime, for example, and YouTube, of course, and other platforms that are functioning like aggregators. And right now, vam is not attributing viewership through those aggregators, but we do, we do obviously want to do that, and that's one of the biggest requests I get, and actually it's one of the biggest requests I get, even from streamers. So broadcasters want it. Streamers want it. Everyone wants to see the full picture of who's watching their content, no matter where they're watching it.

Matt Cundill  9:25  
So I think you're talking about me there, because I purchased my crave through Amazon Prime, and I was watching reruns of The Sopranos through there.

Sue Haas  9:35  
So in that case, that viewership would be attributed to Amazon and not crave, which obviously is an issue for crave and so that. And it's not even that Amazon wants it that way. That's just the way it works today. So that is a number one roadmap item for us to address, hopefully in the next year. Yeah.

Matt Cundill  9:54  
I mean, this is fascinating to talk about it. You know, even hearing something about, oh, well, this pertains. QR app is not working well inside fiber TV, or it's not working well, you know, being distributed on, you know, an Amazon firebox and stuff like that. So these are things that these companies are spending a lot of time trying to figure out. And with that said, we've made it sound like everybody has left cable with the conversation we have. But in Quebec, for instance, Quebec francophones, it's still 70. 79% are still on linear TV in Ontario.

Sue Haas  10:25  
Oh, I was gonna say it's 80% in French Quebec and in Canada as a whole, gets up into the 60s, and it's the big, strong, healthy number. And actually just came off 130 I had a call with Carolyn from radio connects, and we were just talking about this that we really are disadvantaged sometimes as Canadians to get the US numbers constantly being thrown back at us as proxy data for Canada, and they're not the same viewership or listening habits at all. Definitely not in Quebec, that's for sure, where it's linear, radio and video are very high. And even the rest of Canada compared to the US, where it's almost I think streaming surpassed cable and broadcast at this point in the US, like slightly.

Matt Cundill  11:11  
I have the numbers, you know, fairly even. But when you look at the culture of why that's happened, I think there's been a lot of infighting between the cable companies and YouTube. There's a recent one between ESPN and YouTube over how to distribute the football game, and we're not going to show it. There's a lot of carriage fees that go on and tremendous infighting. And I think it's just driven people into just, I'll handle it myself. I don't need to go with my cable company. It's just been a little bit easier to cut the cord down there. But to that and how it works for you, the US data just isn't very helpful for you and for all of us as Canadians.

Sue Haas  11:45  
No, it is not showing the true habits and consumption patterns of Canadians. And I could say, as in my new role, this is actually quite challenging, because when I'm talking to global players and global platforms, particularly as Canada, there's a sense of, Well, I already subscribed to all this North American data, so I don't need Canadian specific data, because the streamers are global. The agencies they deal with are global. And they're used to doing, oh, here's my emu markets, and here's my North American markets. And here they break it out into sections globally, and we fall into North America, unfortunate for us and unfortunate for Mexico as well. But the data, we have to make a big case constantly to the relevance and the importance of Canadian specific data, and to not use us numbers for us as new mayors. It takes away opportunity, which takes away from we are nonprofit, and we're trying to spread the cost of creating the data amongst a bigger pool of clients, which helps out our broadcasters, helps out everyone in our ecosystem, so it takes away an opportunity, but more importantly, it's not strong data when you're not using Canadian numbers. So that I do find that something I'm facing often and it's a unique thing for us because we're so geographically close to the US. For example, Australia doesn't face this. The UK doesn't face this as other English speaking markets, but us, as Canadians in media business, do, and our

Matt Cundill  13:09  
geography in Canada, I mean, we're far apart from one another. I think culturally, we're different. The Maritimes really has less in common with Manitoba than and even if you want to even narrow it down, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, I know in politics, they try to jam Manitoba and Saskatchewan together, just so they can get a better, you know, data subset. But you know, a conservative in Saskatchewan is not the same as a conservative in Manitoba, and you can get some funny numbers coming out of out of that.

Sue Haas  13:33  
So, yeah, for sure. So an angle that I try, I have to work a lot closer with our agency partners and our holding codes and our representatives in the Canadian market, especially for these global agencies, is to really have them endorse fam and our other data sets and tell the platforms you know, in order for us to do business with you moving forward, we really want you using this third party neutral number that everyone is part of. And in fact, that's more the case as I'm learning more and more in other global markets, like in France and Australia and UK, where the buy side is really forcing this participation in a third party measurement where we're I'm feeling and what I'm hearing is we don't force it as much in Canada. So there's more work for me to do in this new role to get the buy side to be more partners with us, because I'm just throwing a company out there, just for example, say, if you're Netflix, and I'm out asking you to join the VAM data set, and you have all your own first party numbers for content planning, et cetera, et cetera. So why would you subscribe to this data? You get to see competitors. So that's a big plus. So you get competitive benchmarking, but also part of it is you shouldn't be able to do business in Canada without being able to show a number that's not your own number, and that's a big push I'm making. But if the agencies aren't asking you for it, then it makes my my cell a little weak. And what I've heard is a lot of other markets agencies do push for it pretty aggressively. So. So it's something that I really want to connect with the cmdc here and other associations to make a stronger case for.

Matt Cundill  15:07  
Did you watch the gray cup and do you have any immediate day after data you want to share right now?

Sue Haas  15:13  
No, I did not. I'm not. I'm not a football fan. I'm sorry to tell you, I did watch the Jays. We did publish quite a few numbers on the results of that the highest sports viewing event ever for Rogers. You probably know that already.

Matt Cundill  15:27  
Yeah, I do. But what I also find very interesting is the recap that you do about the ads that I saw. Because, listen, we're bombed with ads on these things, and we don't even know that we're bombed with ads. And if I was to ask, be asked to recall, I might get, oh, I think I was pitched a cell phone and probably some food, and, you know, a few other things I wouldn't recall. You don't remember what food you were pitched? Yeah, there might, there was definitely some food to eat there, but, but it's a lot of, you know, it's legal, financial, there's some cars in there. And I love seeing the feedback about who's trying to get into our eyeballs when this is going on.

Sue Haas  16:04  
Yeah. No, me too. And it still amazes me for something as as high profile as a World Series final game, the repetition on the ads is at least on the streaming I viewed it through streaming is still extraordinarily high from my point of view. I can name the four brands that I saw over and over and over again.

Matt Cundill  16:23  
Yeah, the repetitions wild and because I remember, even on linear TV, I was watching the Stanley Cup, and I think it was, you know, the Triumph laid on the line, you know, ad that played over and over again. Generally, there's a song associated with it, a familiar jingle, and then, you know, it used to be just bookends in radio, you know, we'll start and end the set. And now I'm finding that they're going three times in the stop set to really get into our minds. Is there any I mean, it's, obviously works, right?

Sue Haas  16:52  
Well, obviously, yeah, it's a planned redundancy, as you would call it. Are you a hockey fan? Yes, NHL, yes. Have you watched it Monday nights yet on Amazon Prime?

Matt Cundill  17:06  
I have not, but I have it on my list to watch, and I'm a Montreal Canadiens fan, so I will watch on rds. I will watch the game in French, even though I'm speaking in English, because the announcer is the best.

Sue Haas  17:17  
Just to tie data back into the conversation a little bit Amazon. When the Amazon started to they got the rights to air hockey on Monday nights, plus a Thursday night special commentary game on hockey. They joined our TV data service because of that. And that was what I was talking about earlier. Is the push from the from the buy side, the agency side, that because that was live sports, and that was the first big live sports series to run on a streamer here in Canada. They did join. So that's an interesting sort of twist where it's not vam, which is our cross media video measurement. This is TV measurement. They've joined TV measurement as well Amazon, because they want to be able to see their ama number besides the linear broadcast, another way that we're bringing new players into the fold is the move for good or bad of live sports rights. So I'll

Matt Cundill  18:09  
look at something like the Montreal Canadiens, who on Saturday nights are very popular. I think hockey in Canada is very popular on Saturday nights, and those rights are treated differently across the country. And you know, the NHL has been very popular on Saturday nights, and I think they've looked for ways to monetize Tuesday. I think Amazon's a great way to monetize Monday and football in the US, Thursday night is an Amazon product. Black Friday is an Amazon product. In the US, they have a Black Friday game, actually, of all things.

Sue Haas  18:37  
And NFL joined Nielsen for those NFL games, and they incorporated their own data. So this is a in the data space. It's really important. What we really want is an integration of the platform's data into our data. That's a true partnership for us. And they have done that in the US, and they actually just announced they did it in Germany, and hopefully we'll have an announcement soon too,

Matt Cundill  18:58  
for the radio people who are listening. Do you have any ideas how they can make the data that's available more actionable?

Sue Haas  19:05  
Yeah, so a few updates on the radio data side from our end at numerous Well, one is, Were you familiar with our RTS data that we had in market? So that's being relaunched at the end of December under a new name called Echo intelligence, and that's what I was just talking to radio connects about, because they use the data quite a bit, and they actually said it's the only data site that they've had that has unique Canadian numbers, and it's the only Canadian specific consumer insights data that has such breadth of radio insights in it. So that's being relaunched. It's now across 35,000 survey respondents, which is a much bigger Well, it's around the same size, but it's now general population. So before it was just going to radio listeners. Now it's across all Canadians. We are seeing strong radio listening trends as early results out of the survey. So it's not going down as far as. Radio viewership from the numbers, but it's actually a more representative sample of typical Canadian versus only radio listener. So that's coming out. It's going to be available in new software. And in fact, we're going to be talking to agencies about ingesting that data directly into their back end tech stacks, because that's how they want to receive the data. So we're going to work hard to deliver data with how our partners want to use it as they move forward. And it might not be a front end software execution. And as I said, in the case of agencies, they might want to direct import into their back end so that they can index it with all the other data that they're working on. And then for our radio audience measurements, or audio equivalent to vam and Tam, we are in our video planning tool. I think I think I mentioned this to you last time we connected. We're still planning to integrate radio data so you can see cross platform reach and frequency on linear streaming digital as well as audio. So that's something that is in the works, and I'm hoping that rolls out within the next nine months or so. And we haven't talked about this yet, but another exciting product that's part of my focus over the next six months or so is a partnership with a company called Audience project, and this is on the ad measurement side. So this is showing you campaign results cross platform, starting with video, and it's showing you your campaign performance, your de duplicated. It's mostly reach and frequency, but you can get into other types of KPIs, like attention metrics and conversions and things like that. And showing you that across all the platforms that as a brand, it's really focused towards brands the product that you've activated on. So you may have run campaign on Netflix, Tiktok, linear TV, YouTube, and it's going to show you who you reached in your target demographic and which of those platforms performed the best. And once TV is not in it yet, so it's starting interesting for us that we don't have TV in it yet, but that's why we're bringing the product to Canada as numerous so that we can integrate the numerous data into it. That should be done by February 2026 we'll have the TV data integrated. And that's one of the big requests we're getting from the agency and advertiser side, is it's great to see all these digital platforms de duplicated, but please bring TV, because it's a huge part of the video, picture and then audio will be next, so that's on our roadmap as well. We don't have a date for audio yet, but now that we've set CV for February, I'm hopeful that audio will roll out shortly after that.

Matt Cundill  22:26  
Sue, thanks so much for doing this and being part of the show once again and bringing us up to speed on vam and video and audio.

Sue Haas  22:32  
Thanks, no problem. Thanks, Matt. You.