Broadcast Prime Highest ROI, Nielsen Undercounting as Much as 20% -- Bill Harvey

As part of Advertising Week in New York the five big broadcast TV networks gathered the top buyers together with Hollywood producers and creatives on October 2 CBS Chief Research Officer David Poltrack had invited me to his table with Gayle Fuguitt CEO of ARF Poltrackamp8217s ace wingman Greg Kasparian and the estimable Leslie Wood Kicked off by CBS President of Network Sales Jo Ann Ross the top five television networks put on a classy show showcasing the quality of their content and its key role in the future present and past of televisionROIIn a panel of the top network researchers Poltrack cited the body of ROI work he has done with TiVo ResearchTRA and Nielsen Catalina proving that the quality of programming has an extra engagement effect that increases ROI of broadcast prime over other networks and dayparts more than overcoming its higher CPM Several people excitedly remarked to me about ARFamp8217s plans to do a third Adworks study The pace of ROI since TiVo ResearchTRAamp8217s introduction of sustainable singlesource continues to accelerate Once Adworks III is published the shift of dollars back into broadcast prime is almost a confident prediction The October 9 announcement of Rentrak acquiring Kantaramp8217s singlesource division further substantiates the seismic shift toward ROI replacing CPM as the ultimate metric in making TV advertising decisionsPoltrack reported a large CBS study of all CPG brands spending over 10000000year in network television which found that in 2000 the percent of dollars allocated to broadcast prime had been 40 By 2014 this has dropped to 22 Yet ARFamp8217s landmark Adworks II study based on more than 400 different brandsamp8217 BehaviorScan tests showed that the optimal percentage of broadcast prime was about half the total TV dollars the latter allocation produced the highest ROI So the trend has actually been going in the wrong directionUndercountingIn the same panel NBCUamp8217s Alan Wurtzel one of the founders of CIMM called attention to the suspicious drop in Nielsen ratings among 1824 2534 and 4554 adults despite their increase in hoursday of viewing and provided evidence that OverTheTop OTT viewing of Internet streams on the TV set could more than account for this apparent drop since amp8220Nielsen has no current plans to measure OTTamp8221 Wurtzel showed pie charts for several top shows on NBC and other networks indicating that the missing OTT audience frequently exceeds 20 He also pointed out that the OTT landscape is balkanized based on which device is being used and that it is a complex measurement problem to address with for example Rokuamp8217s 10000000 homes now using as much NBCU streaming content as all 200000000 users of YouTube From our own work we have seen that OTT measurement in fact requires solving for more than two dozen different devicesamp8220The metrics are beginning to fail usamp8221 he saidSeveral speakers called attention to the everlarger proportions of audience being undercounted by Nielsen based either on methodology gaps or on conventions such as C3 or even C7 CBS Executive Vice President and General Manageramp8211Entertainment News ampamp Sports CBS Interactive Marc DeBevoise called for C30 as a more relevant measure in other words counting audiences that watch an episode after the first seven days of its shelf life In fact this year the first C7 deals were actually made and the trend appears to be toward accepting that the viewing window has not stopped lengthening and longer basis periods will be neededSync AppsDeBevoise also revealed that special video content had been created by the actual series writers and producers and run on second screen in sync apps for 11 CBS shows last season We see this as a very positive trend and one which we predicted and recommended Symphony Advanced Media amp8220SAMamp8221 reports that mobiletasking attending to another screen device while watching TV is now up to 40 during the average primetime ad podAs Poltrack asked Why not use that extra opportunity to engageSAM uses passive panel measurement and proprietary methods to attribute mobiletasking and to identify the types of mobiletasking that increase versus decrease TV commercial recall and other success measures This type of information generates nonobvious and relevant findings we have reported Custom ContentNBCU reported having created 10 comedic short programs with Audi use of crowdsourcing for comedic talent of 3000 submissions two will be on TV in summer 2015 and a third will launch on digital and using amp8220social sync appsamp8221 for amp8220The Voiceamp8221 These are all forms of custom content which is becoming an enlarging sphere within all video production as predicted and recommended here and elsewhereViewable ImpressionsIAB defines a viewable impression as amp8220at least 50 of the ad being on screen for at least 2 continuous secondsamp8221 Matt Timothy President of Vindico which serves the largest chunk of the bigfive streaming inventory reported that this inventory averages 65 viewability vs 45 for Internet branded digital video and vs 37 of ad networkexchange inventory Overall average weighted by volume is 45FraudHe also reported that bot activity averages 10 of all impressions in digital video served but is only 2 for the 5 big networks For Internet brand publishers it is 7 and it is 14 for ad networks and exchangesOther Interesting Data PointsLinda Yaccarino NBCU President of Sales interviewed David Bank Managing Director Equity Research RBC Capital Markets Bank had counted up the substitutable impressions of digital video in relation to mainstream TV and found that the entire digital video impressions fivenetwork market was amp8220about the size of one new episode of amp8216Big Bangamp8217amp8221Eileen Heisler creatorexecutive producer of ABCamp8217s amp8220The Middleamp8221 mentioned that her show makes 24 episodes a year vs 22 for a strong procedural vs 1215 for a amp8220big dramaamp8221It has now become commonplace for a showamp8217s writers to watch and respond to Twitter and Facebook feeds during the main airing something I had recommended to network clients years agoSeveral people including Yaccarino expressed consternation and the incomprehensibility of why Digital Ad Insertion is not rolling out faster DAI of course provides TV with Internetstyle targetability and measurability and can be enhanced with interactivity We began beating those three DAI drums in the 90s so we can easily empathizeDana Walden ChairmanCEO of Fox Television Group said that she picks up new series based on 1 their creative talentsamp8217 combined amp8220voiceamp8221 2 they have amp8220something to sayamp8221 and 3 their being passionate about it Note that people doing their passion work operate in the Flow stateAudrey Steele Senior Vice President Sales Research and Marketing of Fox Broadcasting Company emphasized the importance of environment on commercial effectiveness calling for more research thereGeri Wang President ABC Sales said amp8220Weamp8217ve got to invest more in measurementamp8221 Bill Harvey is a wellknown media researcher and inventor who cofounded TRA Inc and is its Strategic Advisor His nonprofit Human Effectiveness Institute runs his weekly blog on consciousness optimization Bill can be contacted at billbillharveyconsultingcomRead all Billamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at In Terms of ROICheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates at MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentariesamp160

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