Facebook Selling Video Using ‘Total Ratings Points’

Facebook is offering advertisers a new way to buy and plan campaigns that employ both video on the social network and TV.

The move comes as TV tries to defend its share of ad dollars from digital and social competition.

Facebook says that TV and Facebook complement each other, so it has created a new measurement that’s more familiar to TV advertisers who buy based on Nielsen ratings points. Facebook calls its metric total rating points.

“Marketers can plan a campaign across TV and Facebook with a total TRP target in mind, and they can buy a share of those TRPs directly with Facebook,” Facebook says in a blog post. “Then, Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings measurement system can verify Facebook’s in-target TRP delivery, and Nielsen’s Total Ad Ratings system can verify the TRP delivery for Facebook and television combined.”

Facebook says putting TV and Facebook together works.

• Measured across 42 U.S. campaigns, when TV and Facebook were combined, advertisers saw a 19% increase in targeted reach versus TV alone. When Millennials were the target audience, incremental reach increased to 37%.

Read more at B&C.

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.