• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, March 21, 2017

Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) on Tuesday launched a cross-media sales measurement tool for digital and TV advertising with Facebook.

The tool, announced at the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) conference in New York, aims to measure the sales effectiveness and unduplicated reach of consumer packaged goods (CPG) ad campaigns that run across TV, desktop, and mobile publishers. NCS said Facebook will begin using the tool to measure the return on ad spend for campaigns that include both advertising on the social media giant’s platform and TV.

Advertisers want to understand the effectiveness of advertising across channels, and to be able to attribute which media channel was most effective in terms of sales. In addition, NCS said that understanding duplication is essential for determining true audience reach. For its part, Facebook wants to get a better understanding of how advertising on its platform and TV drive sales.

"Advertisers consistently ask us for better, cross-channel sales effect measurement,” stated Leslie Wood, chief research officer, NCS. "To reach this common goal, it will take more than the efforts of individual media companies. It will take the entire industry, collaborating together and with independent, trusted third parties.”

"Measuring sales across different platforms and channels, both digital and TV, is an ongoing industry challenge. Solutions that can help solve this challenge, like the cross-media sales measurement tool from Nielsen Catalina Solutions, move us in the right direction. We support all efforts from our third-party partners to bring independent and accurate measurement to every advertiser,” Fred Leach, director of marketing science, Facebook, told Real-Time Daily via email.