No, the CIMMs aren’t game avatars…they are the lead researchers (supported by their CEOs) from 15 leading media, advertiser, and media agencies.  They come from places like NBC, CBS, Fox, ESPN/Disney, Viacom, Procter, Unilever, AT&T, WPP, SMG, and Carat.  At the ARF Ad:Week event, we got to meet the head CIMM, who currently is Alan Wurtzel, head of research for NBC.

BTW, “CIMM” stands for “Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement”.

While Sims are trying to get through their daily virtual lives, CIMMs are trying to kickstart innovation in the measurement of long-form video across 3 screens; TV, internet, and smaller mobile devices.  And CIMMs have CIMM-bucks; if I did the math right as Alan was speaking, they have a 7 figure war-chest to seed innovation that might come from the big boys or from the next college kid tinkering in their garage in Silicon Valley.

Alan gave insight into the formation of CIMM.  There was shared dissatisfaction with the state of media measurement regarding video.  He reiterated that no one was failing but that this was “very hard stuff”, and needed the industry to come together to encourage innovation.  A number of research leaders then recruited their CEOs who offering unanimous support.  The result was 15 leading media companies, advertisers, and media agencies coming together, putting their money where their mouths were, to fund video media measurement innovation.

The CIMMs have an interesting approach.  They want to seed innovation, evaluate pilot projects and then let the vendor take that proof to the marketplace in order to ultimately let the marketplace decide if a particular innovation really is a better media measurement mousetrap.

Alan also revealed that CIMM is about to issue two RFPs in the next week or so; one is about set top box data, and the other is about multi-platform video measurement.  The ARF plans to carefully study these RFPs because they represent the distillation of priority-setting on the part of media and marketing leadership organizations.

The CIMMs are driven by a belief that if you can’t measure it, you can’t sell it and an assessment that we aren’t measuring “it” as well as we need to.  Improvement and innovation is welcomed by the CIMMs from all quarters, including the media measurement heavyweights.

Sims mimic the real world, but CIMMs change the world.  Should be a very interesting ride!