VAB calls for broader audience metrics to support precision targeting

The Video Advertising Bureau has recommended that advertisers and media sellers adopt households or persons 2+ as new co-standards for video audience guarantees.

The recommendation aims to replace legacy buy-sell metrics, such as adults 25–54, with broader audience bases that better reflect cross-platform comparability and support precision targeting practices. According to VAB, the shift would give marketers a common measurement foundation across the largest media platforms.

VAB said its analysis of multiple video currency sources over recent years showed that households and persons 2+ are the most stable and comparable audience measures, especially for entertainment content.

The proposed standards are also intended to support the use of first-party data-driven targeting tools on both the buy and sell sides of the market, including advertisers, agencies, publishers and multichannel video programming distributors. VAB said that broader audience bases allow for greater flexibility in aligning available inventory with custom target definitions, reducing reliance on narrower demographic segments like age and gender.

The organization said marketers have expressed a need for consistency in audience measurement across platforms. While activation methods and targeting may vary, comparable audience counts based on a shared metric help measure campaign performance and planning more effectively.

Sean Cunningham, president and CEO of VAB, said the proposal reflects how marketers currently operate.

“With 2026 buyers and sellers having such precision targeting insights refined so deeply on behaviors and identity that so surpass partial age/sex groupings, those aggregations seem outmoded and artificial,” Cunningham said. “Transacting across wider canvasses, guaranteeing across a choice of wider audiences with maximum stability, and then letting the precision optimization tools do their magic aligns with how video media is activated by marketers today.”

VAB said the recommendation is intended for immediate use in discussions between buyers and sellers.

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VAB represents premium multiscreen TV providers, distributors and other media companies. The group provides research and strategic guidance to support marketing and advertising decisions.