ANA's Response to the VAB's Recommendation for HH or P2+ as New Standards for Audience Guarantees

The Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) recently recommended that television and video transactions adopt either Households (HH) or Persons 2+ as co-standards for audience guarantees.

In the ANA’s view, this proposal does not align with the needs of advertisers, nor does it represent a modern approach to measurement or accountability.

Advertisers require a currency that offers price continuity, transactional stability, and accountability. These principles are precisely why the marketplace moved away from household-based guarantees more than 50 years ago, adopting age/sex demographic guarantees (e.g., Adults 18–49, Adults 25–54) to increase relevance and commercial discipline. Reverting to HH, or equivalently broad Persons 2+ guarantees, would represent a step backward for advertisers, not progress. Additionally, marketers in certain regulated industries (e.g., spirits, automotive, pharmaceuticals, children’s appeal products) require demographics with age for compliance.

For decades, demographic guarantees have served as the financial foundation of upfront and scatter transactions, underpinning the CPMs marketers are charged today. These demographic audiences function as pricing and tonnage controls, not targeting mechanisms. Replacing them with substantially broader guarantees would disrupt CPM continuity, dilute advertiser signal by reducing the clarity, relevance, and accountability conveyed by the audience’s definition in the transaction, and shift risk away from sellers and onto buyers without improving accountability.

A shift toward HH and broad P2+ may also result in other emerging vendors reducing their efforts to produce high-quality personification methodologies and to have those third-party validated (a long-standing measurement principle of the ANA).

The ANA supports efforts to stabilize the TV marketplace, including the evolution from purely panel-based measurement toward the responsible integration of big data. However, stability should not come at the expense of transactional clarity. True progress will come from strengthening outcome accountability, not from broadening the currency in ways that obscure value.

As always, advertisers retain full autonomy over their own buying decisions and should consider how the VAB's recommendation may impact their business. From the ANA’s view, the future of video is not households versus demographics. It is measured outcomes built on stable foundations. A trading currency exists to stabilize transactions; outcome measurement exists to prove effectiveness. Conflating the two weakens both.