NIELSEN AND

POINTLOGIC

THE POWER OF

Just over a year ago, Pointlogic became part of Nielsen. This was always likely to be one of the more interesting mash-ups in marketing measurement. On the one hand, there was a global leader in data and research with databases spanning media and buying behavior (Nielsen). On the other hand, there was an agile software and analytics specialist with a big reputation for custom and proprietary solutions at the heart of client strategies (Pointlogic).

This article is a quick catch-up on how things are going. There are areas where Pointlogic teams aligned with the needs to deliver critical currency data innovations and there are reverse situations, where Nielsen are learning and bringing to market some of the innovative Pointlogic products.

Before jumping into the solutions, it is also worth highlighting the fascinating combination of customization and industry standardization that this merger has brought into focus. The Nielsen focus has often been on scale and standardization. The need for bulletproof systems to deliver standard algorithms through standard reports. The Pointlogic philosophy has been to support a much more custom client approach concerning reports, functions and calculations. This customization possibility is now being opened up for more Nielsen datasets and clients, in order to allow the combination of currency data with custom visuals and frameworks.

With clients in over 100 countries, Pointlogic software is integral to the planning functions of large advertisers, media owners and media agencies. The Pointlogic solutions cover various major marketing stages and help to bridge the gap between the qualitative and quantitative elements of modern marketing to achieve better ROI and campaign effectiveness:

Let us start with Nielsen Media Impact, which is the delivery platform to enable Nielsen to be at the forefront of cross-media analysis and planning. It delivers integrated Reach, Resonance and Reaction data in a single cross media-planning platform. Media Impact is combining and analyzing new datasets on an almost daily basis and new markets are being rolled out throughout the year. Nevertheless, beyond this massive undertaking, we want to look at some of the other partnerships that have been enabled since Pointlogic became part of the Nielsen world.

Allocation of marketing budgets across brands and markets is a major strategic decision. Bizpoint is a Pointlogic software solution that provides a standardized approach to manage the complexity of budget allocation processes and make them more effective.

Pointlogic’s previous work was often with agencies, so the platforms were calibrated to be excellent at capturing the various strategic and qualitative factors that make sure fast growing brands or brands with a specific challenge got budget.

Linking up with Nielsen’s base of brand owner clients with their depth of quant data and MMM results means that Bizpoint is now being optimized to deal with both the qualitative and the quantitative factors behind a successful allocation strategy. Again, customization is key, so while we have default “recipes”, Bizpoint will be adjusted to incorporate the brand owner’s specific needs.

BUDGET ALLOCATION ACROSS BRANDS AND MARKETS1

The flagship amongst the Pointlogic solutions is Commspoint. It is the software platform that sits on the desktop of the biggest and most successful global networks. Planners trust it to firstly help clarify and tease out the objectives of campaigns, and secondly, to identify the most effective channels for their campaign. The planning cycle can be completed by simulating and optimizing communication plan scenarios, in order to create an effective media strategy.

Marketers have more options than ever before when it comes to consumer engagement. There are a huge number of variables in play, so finding the right contact points and messages for a particular audience is where the challenges for agencies and brands lie. A complex task requires a multi-function approach and Commspoint is the platform that offers optimizing decision-making and brings a quantitative edge to planning frameworks.

Nielsen have always had a major presence in planning with offering mono media planning tools as well as by supplying the currency data. With the addition of Commspoint to that suite it means that Nielsen now have tools and coverage of the most upstream planning phases where decisions are made about objectives and strategies, using the language and frameworks of the major agency groups.

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION PLANNING3

Understanding the optimal brand positioning and which elements to highlight in your communication is an important task for every marketer. Brandpoint is a software and analytics solution integrating various sources of information to help identify the optimal positioning of your brand, either through functional and emotional benefits or the personality projected by the brand. A key strength of Brandpoint is that it is able to simulate the effect of changes to your brand positioning and messaging on your main KPIs.

Previously, Brandpoint was positioned as a standalone solution, but now within Nielsen it can be much more logically integrated into a broad-spectrum analysis of a brand or as part of a brand tracker to understand and explore opportunities for growth.

UNDERSTANDING AND IMPROVING BRAND POSITIONING2

Many businesses are still struggling to understand how effective their marketing communication really is. Valuepoint is a software and analytics solution to help to understand the impact of cross media campaigns on the various stages of the brand-consumer relationship. Nielsen is a global leader for sales models, and Pointlogic bring the ability to tease out ROI for the crucial brand effects that often precede or explain subsequent sales effects. Valuepoint uses respondent level modelling and this way it can provide the return-on investments for various early stages of the path-to-purchase, such as awareness and preference.

By combining Nielsen’s strong heritage within sales modelling with an ability to layer on brand effect models at a person level, we increase the ability to fully understand how brand communication works and what brands can do to create change.

CROSS MEDIA MODELLING TO UNDERSTAND BRAND EFFECTS AT THE CONSUMER LEVEL4

NEW SOLUTIONS WITH EXISTING DATAAmong the most exciting aspects of the combination of Pointlogic and Nielsen has been the ability to take an agile and holistic development capability and combine it with unrivalled data width and depth. Many things are in the pipeline based on this combination.

If you want to know more about Pointlogic’s solutions, request whitepapers on methodology and approach, or if you want to discuss client opportunities with somebody from Pointlogic, send them an email at info@ pointlogic.com, call at +31 10 281 60 60, or check their website, https://pointlogic.com/en