Ad Ratings Set to Roll
But Cable Nets Say Their Worries Weren't Addressed
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 1/21/2007 7:00:00 PM
Cable-research officials, saying all their fears haven't been allayed, expressed concerns last week about Nielsen Media Research's plan to start measuring viewership of TV commercials in May.
After consulting with more than 100 clients during the past month, Nielsen said last week that it would start providing average national commercial-minute ratings May 31. The announcement came after the service's launch was delayed several times.
EVALUATION PROCESS
All of the information for May through August will be labeled as “evaluation” data and be made available to Nielsen customers at no charge. Nielsen's commercial-ratings data file will include six different “streams” of data, incorporating live and time-shifted viewing.
Executives at several cable networks were still questioning the timing of the debut commercial-ratings, which will not be available until after the so-called upfront market, when networks negotiate and sell advertising for the new TV season.
Cable-network executives also said they will carefully monitor the initial commercial ratings data for accuracy.
“They have told us they are addressing our fears, but we have yet to see whether they are satisfactorily addressing our fears,” said Turner Broadcasting System chief research officer Jack Wakshlag. “This is a timetable that provides us with various tools to look at the data.”
Wakshlag and other cable officials also continued to press for the commercial-ratings service to be audited by the Media Rating Council, an independent industry body.
Nielsen has taken steps to secure that accreditation. “We're in the pre-audit phase,” Nielsen vice president of global communications Gary Holmes said.
ACCREDITATION CLOUD
The issue of reliability and the MRC accreditation “hangs over this like a cloud,” according to Lifetime Television executive vice president of research Tim Brooks, who is also the chairman of the Advertising Research Foundation's video electronic-media council.
“In order to transact billions of dollars of business, both buyers and sellers have to trust the data, at some level, that they're transacting on, that it has in fact been vetted by a third party,” he said.
The issue, according to Wakshlag, is “likely to be the most significant impediment of all, because we've never negotiated or posted on a currency that's not been MRC-accredited.”
Nielsen initially told its clients in a memo last June that it planned to start measuring viewership of TV spots in November. This was at the request of broadcast-network executives, who were concerned that their properties weren't getting compensated for the time-shifted viewing of commercials.
“Live [ratings] just is not acceptable to us,” said NBC Universal president of research Alan Wurtzel. “It captures no time-shifted viewing, and that's becoming more and more significant.”
Nielsen's announcement last summer about tracking commercial viewership took the cable industry by surprise. Executives with cable networks immediately voiced reservations about the data's accuracy.
For example, cable officials said that Nielsen's software was unable to distinguish between local and national spots that run on cable networks. The ratings company has said it is installing new equipment to resolve that issue.
Last week, Nielsen said it will offer six “streams” of commercial-viewing data: live viewing; live viewing, plus DVR playback on the same day; live viewing, plus DVR playback in one day; live viewing, plus DVR viewing in two days; live viewing, plus DVR viewing in three days; and live viewing, plus DVR viewing in seven days.
NBCU PROPOSAL
Wurtzel conceded that Nielsen's commercial ratings won't come out in time to use for upfront negotiations this year.
“It just makes the use of this thing as a currency for the upfront a moot point,” he said.
So Wurtzel, whose purview includes NBC and cable services such as USA Network, said he'll propose agencies use live-plus-same-day program ratings as the basis for upfront negotiations — not just live-program ratings data — as “a one-time transitional metric” until the commercial ratings are available.
“I think it's a reasonable compromise,” he said. “It gives us some credit for time-shifted viewing.”
The Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, which sent Nielsen a list of its concerns about commercial measurement last July, has been working with the ratings company to address those issues.
