Origin, the cross-media measurement solution developed by advertiser trade group ISBA, is now opening up to the wider market following the completion of its Beta trial. Origin’s CEO Tom George says that any advertiser can now access Origin’s core reporting service once they’ve paid the ‘Fractional Advertiser Contribution’ which helps fund the service.
Origin has been in development since 2019, created as the UK’s implementation of the World Federation of Advertisers’ (WFA) framework for cross media measurement. The focus in the initial development of Origin has been delivering deduplicated reach and frequency measurement across different media channels, with more expansive capabilities set to be added further down the line.
The tool has been undergoing Beta trials since last September, which has been limited to a select group of ISBA members. Today’s release opens up Origin to the wider market for the first time.
The news isn’t being described as a full rollout, but rather an ‘Expanded Availability’ phase. The initial product available in this phase is limited to deduplicated reach and frequency measurement for YouTube and linear TV, which Origin says include second-by-second level measurement for the first-time. Meta inventory, which was included in the Beta trial, will seemingly not be available in this phase.
The company says, however, that more media sources are on the way, with Meta, TikTok, and Amazon inventory set to be added soon. Once these three tech giants are included, Origin says the service will cover 70 percent of UK ad spend. Over time, the service will also add advanced reporting, planning services, measurement of outcome-based metrics, as well as functional and usability improvements.
“It is hugely exciting to open Origin to the wider market,” said CEO Tom George. “With additional enhancements and the scaling to cover more media owners’ inventory, the product will show rapid development throughout 2025 and beyond. Given the amount of demand exhibited by the market, this is the right time to allow access to more advertisers and there are even more ambitious plans for the platform with an extensive development roadmap already in place […] I would urge any brand-owner who wishes to use Origin to contact me directly.”
Beta ends, work continues
Origin, as a project primarily backed by advertisers, has generally had support on the buy-side of the market. Matt Thomas, senior director of brand function and media operations for P&G Northern Europe, said the ability to view data across all of the brand’s campaigns and media channels in a consistent and comparable manner is a first for the company. “This will enable significant improvements in how we increase cross media reach and manage frequency at a campaign level,” he said. “In the future, we are excited about the power of this data to fuel the effectiveness of our media investment.”
The task now for the buy-side will be integrating Origin’s data into the complex planning and measurement frameworks and tools agencies use to guide media decisions. Data has only grown in importance for media agencies since Origin was first announced in 2019, and the big media agencies have continued to develop in-house products and capabilities which draw on vast banks of data. Bhavin Balvantrai, chief market analyst at Omnicom Media Group, suggested that Origin’s data will have fairly unique value in terms of what it brings to these sorts of tools. “Origin has been one of our strategic priorities and adds rich data in an increasingly data-driven media world,” he said. “We believe it can be further leveraged in OMG’s systems, and we will be trialling the Origin API later this year to help facilitate this.”
On the sell-side, Origin will likely look to sign up more media owners to expand the percentage of media it’s able to measure. Broadcasters have generally been holdouts so far, though Origin has partly worked around their non-involvement through the development of its own panel for linear TV. Broadcaster involvement would still be very valuable since, for example, broadcasters could contribute their own data for streaming viewing. And there was, in today’s announcement, at least one sign of a softening stance on the broadcaster front, as Sky is one of the first advertisers to have signed up to the Expanded Availability phase.
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