Minutes of the Meeting: Nov 11

Attended by:

Anna Germanos (Facebook), Amine Sadik (P&G), Amer Al Hajj (Publicis Groupe), Asad Rehman (Unilever), Elda Choucair (OMG), Houda Koussa (Archers), Ibrahim Kadiri (Google), Naheel Abdelall (Beiersdorf), Omar Katerji (Ferrero), Pierre Choueiri (Choueiri Group), Ravi Rao (GroupM), Shadi Kandil (MBWW), TJ Lightwala (Accenture), Tarek Daouk (Dentsu Aegis), Walid Yared (Choueiri Group)

Agenda:

• Update on progress made by X-Media Subgroup
• Motion to Induct New Members into the Committee
• Consent to issue “Invitation to invite interest to participate in the RFP”
• Discussion on the key features of the RFP 

Notable Points of Discussion and Actions:

• We welcomed Houda to her first official meeting of the Committee
• On behalf of the X-Media subgroup, Asad shared the progress update on the WFA cascade to the X-Media working group. It was highlighted that it is not possible for UAE to become part of the WFA global pilot at this stage til 2022. It was also highlighted that the X-media working group recommends including the WFA principles as well as the technical blueprint in our RFP, in order to ensure that the UAE project is future proof and adheres to basic global principles of Cross Media Measurement.
• All the attending members of the committee voted “for” inclusion of MBC, SnapChat, and TikTok to the committee. As a next step, Charlotte will not only share the minutes of this meeting and the draft RFP with their nominated representatives, but will also make sure that they are on our future distribution and meetings list. Welcome MBC, Snap and TikTok.
• The attending members agreed to the draft of the “Invitation to invite intent”. There were following suggestions on maximizing its reach and distribution:
  • Distribute this to WARC and ISOBAR for inclusion in their newsletters and on their websites
  • Explore a partnership with Campaign global to put this into their online issues
  • Distribute this through the ASI Conferencing platform
  • Create a LinkedIn post that is promoted on behalf of ABG, as well as is posted by all members of the committee on their respective linked in pages
• Whilst going through the RFP, the scope of the RFP being a “Online First” vs “Online Only with Linear” was discussed in the room. Whilst this point has been discussed in our previous meetings as well, we reiterated that our intent is to do a combined approach. It was also made clear that our only intent is to help ensure that we do not get a standard “people meter” response back from the partners and that they explore and open the conversations on more modern measurement methodologies and are cognizant of the WFA technical blueprint.
• The point on the system covering all phases of the funnel (upper funnel as well as performance) was also brought up in the meeting. It was reiterated in response that our scope has clearly prioritized upper funnel reach/freq solution. A question was also raised on digital formats other than Video. It was clarified that since Video commands the majority of the spend, we have taken a priority approach to a video measurement.
• It was also agreed by the group that we will request the ABG Board to appoint an Process Auditor to help us manage the transparency of the RFP process. The auditor can belong to any of the ABG’s member organisations and will not need to devote a lot of time to this process.
• It was also agreed that we will appoint a technical and project auditor upon receipt of the responses back from the potential partners. This will also allow us to start bigger discussions on the funding of the ongoing project, as well as help us put the process of POC in place.
• We also agreed that we need to account for the inclusion of “Invitation to Express Intent to Participate” in our project timelines.
• Houda took note of all the other feedback on the RFP itself, and will share the revised draft for Committee’s blessings soon.