Marketers Closer To Getting Reach and Frequency Data from Aquila

Reach and frequency have long been the bedrock of media planning and buying. As media has fragmented and mass media has given way to digital, cross-media measurement has become the holy grail.

Marketers, always worried about how much of their ad spending is being wasted, are now concerned that they are getting too much frequency and not enough reach. 

To solve this vexing problem, the Association of National Advertisers has set about building its own cross-media measurement solution, Aqila.

At the ANA’s Measurement and Analytics conference in Chicago on Tuesday, attendees got an update on Aquila’s progress during a panel discussion moderated by Joe Mandese of MediaPost.

ANA Executive VP Bill Tucker said that Aquila has begun trials with over 20 major advertisers and that campaign data will be running through tis pipes through the end of the year.

Aquila’s calibration panel will have its full complement of 5,000 homes by the first quarter of next year. It’s already got nearly 4,000 homes.

“It’s no secret, right, that marketers are under tremendous pressure to deliver ROI in the face of constrained budgets and increasing complexity due to media fragmentation challenges due to inconsistent data methodologies, data silos and the challenges of privacy,” Tucker said. Surveys have identified solving the problem of cross-media measurement as the number one priority of the ANA’s membership. 

“If there’s 20 million people who enjoy breakfast at QSRs, I want to know that I reached 20 million people once or if I reach 2 million people ten times,” he said.

Tucker estimated that eliminating the waste caused by excess frequency could save marketers 10% of media sending, or $50 billion over three yeas.

Aquila was launched last year with the backing  of four big digital platforms–Geogle, Meta, TikTok and Amazon–which contributed access to their impression data and tens of millions of dollars. Tucker said.

That support is conditioned on the participation of a large number of marketers, he added.

“Our momentum is going to continue as more advertisers come on board,” Tucker said.

The plan for 2026 is getting the majority of the top 100 advertisers using Aquila. While the big digital platforms are backing the company now, next year the advertisers' contribution will grow to the majority of the funding.

Other elements of the Aquila build up are Kantar Media, which is building a calibration panel and is implementing the company’s virtual ID technology, Accenture, which is building the user interface and API that will enable markets to plug Aquila data into their marketing mix models: Comscore, which is providing linear impression data and Mediaocean, which is helping to operationalize the data.

For a big advertiser like McDonald’s, having the kind of intelligence Aquila will provide will be huge, said Alex Ganci, manager-performance learnings at the burger chain. 

She said McDonald’s has just kicked off its trial of Aquila. 

“What we’re hoping to understand in the trials is when we plan for a weekly reach of 70%, what is that cumulatively? And what is that versus what I’m getting in a solo fashion from each one of my platform providers,” Ganci said.

“We spend a lot. We have multiple campaigns that are running at the same time and we know that there are issues with reach and frequency, so the biggest thing fro us it to really understand what we’re planning versus what we’re buying, and what are the audiences we’re hitting lots and lot of time, and what are the audiences that we’re missing,” she said. 

She added that she was hopeful that “what we can learn from that first four-week campaign, I can apply to my second four-week campaign.”

While eliminating waste is a big deal, for marketers like McDonald’s the data is also important to maximize reach and grow sales. 

"We’re not looking to reduce spend. We’re looking to better amplify our coverage,” Ganci said.

Tina Daniels, CEO of Aquila urged all marketers to sign up for trials, warning that if that doesn’t happen, the project will lose support from the digital platforms.

“I just have to say, while I'm on my soapbox, we're not going to get these four companies to work together again. We have a moment in time right now. And you know, in 2027 if brands are sitting there thinking, well, let's just see how it works, and they have completely no supply,” Daniels said. “It is only through like the innovative thought leadership that we get from Alex and her colleagues that really makes this thing work.” 

Tucker added that he expects more platforms to be measured by Aquila. “It's video, it's audio,” he said. And in addition to reach and frequency, it will look to connect its data to campaign outcomes.

“The connection of the platform to performance, business performance,  is going to accelerate and AI is going to turbocharge that,” he said.

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A new report from WPP Media (formerly GroupM) looks into the future. The agency asked dozens of industry leaders about the likelihood of things happening to advertising in the year 2030. It’s just five years ago, but looking back five years, it would have been hard to have predicted where we are today.

Some of the issues addressed in the report concern data. For example, when confronted with the statement that in 2030:”biometric data is standardized and commoditized to the extent that it is widely used to access, personalize and/or secure data and services,” 82% of WPP Media’s experts saw that scenario as likely, with 44% considering it highly likely. 

“Many respondents pointed out that this is already happening: Biometric data is already used in phones, banking, and travel. That convenience and security is likely to continue the trend,” the report said.

When looking at another statement, “Everything is personalized to individuals based on chosen settings, historical data, and other sources — including genetic and medical information,” 61% agreed that was likely (that’s down from the agency’s 202 survey.’ 

“While personalization based on historical data and settings is expected to increase, driven by AI, the use of sensitive genetic and medical data will run up against privacy regulations, consumer resistance, and data silos,” the report said.

When asked about this scenario, “governments and corporations have vast or total access to information about who people are (DNA and biometric data), what they do (GPS and communication data), and what they think/believe (search data, listening devices),”  just 54% of the experts said this was likely. 

“Many believe this is already happening to a large extent, driven by technology and data collection infrastructure. However, there's skepticism about "total" access due to data silos, encryption, varying regulations (especially outside authoritarian states), and potential consumer and regulatory pushback on privacy grounds, particularly concerning medical and genetic data as well as sensitivity around listening devices,” the report said.

But when it came to the proposition that A single global approach to consumer privacy and identity has replaced regional regulatory approaches,” the experts were pessimistic, with more than 75% saying that was highly unlikely.   

The primary reasons cited were geopolitical fragmentation, differing cultural attitudes towards privacy, the slow pace of legislative agreement, and the lack of commercial interest from dominant platforms in standardization, according to the report.

One more thing covered in the report. When asked about the notion that in the future “It is easy for individual consumers to eliminate all exposure to advertising from their daily lives,” 58% of the experts found that unlikely to happen. 

“In fact, with the reinvigoration of out-of-home and more platforms offering sports and other live events specifically for the ad play, not to mention the proliferation of influencers, the inverse may happen,” the report said.

I’m not sure if that’s good news or bad news.

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Roku released some data from the summer about its streaming platform and movies.

It found that a new movie being released in theaters can revive interest in older, related films. 

Searches for franchises like Jurassic Park and Superman surged 3 to 5 times in the runup to the newer films’ premieres, with lingering spikes post-release. 

Roku said that 72% of moviegoers say they are more likely to pay attention to trailers on their TV than on social media and that moviegoers are 1.8 times  more likely to buy a ticket after seeing ads/trailers on a video streaming platform.

This summer, the top movie searches on the Roku platform were Sinners, How to Train Your Dragon, Jurassic World Rebirth, Lilo and Stitch and 28 Days Later.