Now this is going to shake up the industry a bit. Good! Spend more money in the Out-of-Home/Alternative categories instead of wasting it on television ads that nobody watches!
WSJ.com - Nielsen Plans to Track Viewership Of TV Commercials for First Time Nielsen Media Research, the firm that calculates national television ratings, plans to answer one of advertising's most pressing questions: How many people actually watch TV commercials?In November, Nielsen will begin for the first time to provide formal ratings for commercial breaks, a move with far-reaching implications for the fast-changing media world.
Currently, Nielsen, a unit of Dutch media company VNU NV, provides ratings only for individual TV programs in their entirety. Commercial prices are based on that overall rating. The higher the rating of a particular show the more money a TV network can charge advertisers for a spot shown during that program.
Both TV networks and advertisers expect the new Nielsen ratings will show that viewership declines noticeably when a program breaks for commercials. A particularly big drop could fuel advertisers' push for changes in how ads are incorporated into shows, reinforcing demands for fewer or shorter ad breaks and lower ad rates. It could also accelerate the flow of advertising dollars out of television to the Internet and new digital media.
“Prices should go down,” says Bruce Goerlich, executive vice president and director of strategic resources at Publicis Groupe SA's ZenithOptimedia, a firm that buys advertising time on behalf of corporate clients and other marketers. “If I was a buyer, I would be taking the stance of, 'Quite frankly, what you said you were delivering, you weren't.'
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The introduction of commercial ratings comes as advertisers and their agencies are increasingly focused on measuring the results of the commercials they create. Advertising has long been viewed as a game of chance, with marketers putting money into costly TV commercials without any clear idea of whether the ads drive sales of their products or yield greater recognition among consumers.But the Internet gives marketers the ability to determine the number of people who click on an ad, sign up for a test drive at a local car dealership or choose to receive an email newsletter. Ads on other emerging media outlets, such as cellphones and video on demand, are also providing a measure of consumer response. TV, however, still commands the largest share of ad dollars. In 2005, advertisers spent about $54 billion on local, cable and network TV, according to TNS Media Intelligence.
”Proof of performance measures become one of the things that people can use to separate the wheat from the chaff,“ says Jon Swallen, TNS Media Intelligence's senior vice president of research.
