The 12-year-old Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) will be getting new leadership within the first three months of 2022.
That’s because the organization’s CEO and Managing Director who has held the dual roles since CIMM’s 1999 creation is retiring.
Jane Clarke will step down from the positions at CIMM, with the reins at the coalition within the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) handed to Jon Watts.
Watts is co-founder and Executive Director of The Project X Institute, a think tank and strategic advisory collective for the media and advertising industries. He also serves as Project Director for The TV Data Initiative, a consortium of data and technology companies that include DISH Media, Blockgraph, TVSquared, MadHive, VideoAmp, TransUnion, Eyeota and Magnite. The TV Data Initiative is focused on supporting the growth and development of the U.S. TV data ecosystem.
“There is perhaps no one individual in the industry today more responsible for advancing cross-platform video measurement than Jane,” ARF President/CEO Scott McDonald said. “Her ability to help buyers, sellers and vendors join together to identify a vision and act upon it, backed by her unique understanding of the technical and business challenges involved, has made it possible for the industry to be near attainment of its ultimate goal. She now leaves that mission in the very experienced and capable hands of Jon.”
CIMM was founded in 2009 by major TV network groups, television content providers, media agencies and advertisers as an industry R&D consortium to promote innovation in audience measurement for television and cross-platform media. It was acquired by the ARF in 2018 and established as a subsidiary.
During Clarke’s tenure, CIMM launched pilot tests of innovative measurement solutions and conducted research to develop best practices and bring transparency and industry confidence to new measurement solutions. Additionally, CIMM established a framework of building blocks for cross-platform video measurement that includes scaled and nationally-representative, second-by-second TV exposure data; digital census data for content and ads; panel data to fill in the gaps; and methods to connect TV and digital data via ID-graphs. CIMM’s research focused on improvements in these areas, including tools for planning, deduplicating reach across platforms and TV attribution. Additionally, CIMM has long been an advocate for standardizing metadata across TV and digital platforms, including ad and content identifiers such as Ad-ID, to improve cross-platform measurement and bring workflow efficiencies.
“I am so grateful to all in the industry who have been deeply committed to CIMM and its mission,” Clarke said. “It is because of their vision, drive, innovation and willingness to work together that so many significant challenges to cross-platform measurement have been overcome. CIMM is a special organization where all segments of the industry can come together to jointly evaluate and spur the development of new technologies and methodologies to ensure they work for the needs of all. I am honored to have helped guide CIMM and immensely proud of what we have achieved.”
In February, the 12-year-old Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) took to Zoom and conducted the first of its two virtual sessions comprising the 10th annual Cross-Platform Video Measurement & Data Summit. Six months later, we spoke with Jane Clarke to get a new look on the state of measurement. Among Clarke’s choice declarations: The panel just doesn’t work anymore. For all of what Clarke had to say in just under 15 minutes, 
