Governance. It’s what we do.

Published: 08 Oct 2024
Author: Ian Dowds

What does the G in ESG stand for?

It is surprising how many people pause before answering.

When companies refer to their ESG commitments, Environmental and Social standards get the airtime. Governance gets the lower billing.

Perhaps Environmental and Social better lend themselves to eye-catching headlines, vivid images and immersive storytelling.

The fact is that governance is of equal importance. It is not simply financial governance. It includes the implementation of recognised and approved standards across the board. Governance delivers clarity on how and why decisions are made. Without governance ‘do the right thing’ is no more than a nice phrase.

Good governance means you can be sure to do the right thing in the right way.

UKOM sets and governs the industry standard for online audience measurement across PCs, tablets and smartphones. We do it on behalf of our shareholders, the AOP, the IAB UK and ISBA and wider stakeholders including the IPA who sit on our executive board, OFCOM and the CMA.

Barb. Rajar. PAMCo. Route. UKOM. All deliver audience data for their medium in the UK. All are founded on objectivity, transparency and accountability.

In 2023, the IPA released Signals in the Noise, a white paper on the importance of this foundation. Belinda Beeftink, Research Director of the IPA, wrote: “At a time when media agencies are called to be fully accountable for the media they plan and buy it is imperative that the data they use is trusted, accountable, robust and transparent. This is exactly what the JICs provide.”

It is easy to talk the talk of governance, but UKOM’s governance is real. It includes an independent audit of Ipsos iris by ABCe. It includes close and continuous oversight of Ipsos iris by technical and commercial boards made up of advertisers, agencies, publishers, broadcasters, platforms, regulators and trade bodies. UKOM commissioned an independent expert to investigate the theory and Ipsos’ application of iris’ synthetic data set. Real people carrying out real governance.

UKOM’s governance is the reason why so many walk the walk when it comes to trusted audience measurement. OFCOM, the Competition and Markets Authority and the BBC are among the many subscribers to UKOM endorsed data from Ipsos iris. Subscribers include Sky and ITV. All the major UK news publishers. The major magazine publishers. The majority of AOP members subscribe, as does Google.

UKOM governance:

• Ensures Ofcom can publish with confidence their annual Online Nations report.Makes it worth Google working with Ipsos iris to report YouTube audience at organisation level.
• Enables Sky to expand measurement with iris to include off-platform video.
• Allows Ozone to activate iris audiences programmatically for quality publishers.
• Ensures PAMCo can combine robust online numbers with print audiences.
• Permits robust and like-for-like cross device audience comparisons for all publishers.
• Is the reason Dentsu, Havas, Goodstuff and the7Stars subscribe. The clients of these agencies can trust that their online media planning is built on firm foundations.

UKOM is grateful to those organisations that recognise the value of our governance and welcomes all engagement from those who do not yet subscribe to Ipsos iris.

When it comes to audience measurement it is important that companies across our industry don’t just talk the governance talk. Join those who walk it too.