What Do We Want an Impression to Mean?

In print media such as magazines and newspapers in the very beginning it was based on audited counts of the number of copies put into circulation via subscriptions and singlecopy purchases typically made from newsstands Later on it came to be based on total audience not the number of copies but the number of human beings who looked at the issue Of course not every person who looked at the issue opened to the spread where a given advertiseramp8217s ad was locatedIn radio and television in the infancy of each an impression was based on the number of households tuned to the program Later impressions were counted based on the number of people tuned to the programMore recently in TV impressions were based on the number of people who subjectively classify themselves as watching the program and most recently it is the number of people who classify themselves as watching the program during the time the average ad in the show played and going forward it is also the number of people who subjectively classify themselves as viewing during the time a specific ad playedThis subjective viewing idea is operationalized by pushbutton peoplemeters used around the world as the buyingselling currency measurements but not every country does it that way even the ones that use pushbutton peoplemeters In Europe for example most of the countries tell panelists to push their button if they are in a room in which a TV set is on That is of course a larger number than those who consider themselves to be viewingIn digital impressions are generally based on device statistics rather than human being statistics and an impression means that the ad was delivered according to an automatic counter in the delivery path A viewable impression means that at least 50 of the pixels in the ad actually appeared on the screen for at least a second or two seconds if itamp8217s a video ad An ad can be delivered to a frame that is covered by another frame and thatamp8217s one way that an impression may not be a viewable impressionInterestingly the future of ad impressions was not brewed in television or in digital but in radioIn the early 1960s ARB later known as Arbitron now a part of Nielsen introduced a multimedia diary and used it to go into competition with the leading measurer of local radio audiences called Pulse who used recall surveys The multimedia diary gave radio smaller audience numbers than Pulse which led ARB to introduce a radioonly diary which showed larger audience sizes for radio Birch and others jumped into the fray with their own measurement solutions This led the industry to collaborate in the creation of the All Radio Measurement Study amp8220ARMSamp8221 a validation study to test about a dozen methods against a truth standard coincidentals in homes and meters in carsOne interesting feature of the study was that the coincidental reported audience at two different levels people who said they were subjectively listening and other people who did not selfclassify that way but who said they could hear the radio The ARB radio diary came the closest to the listening hearing truth standard and became the sole currency in the local radio industryMany years later when the PPM was developed amusing tale it was calibrated to provide audience data at the hearing level not just the listening level Arbitron used it to replace its diaries for measuring radio and Nielsen now also uses it to measure television both in and out of the home as one input along with pushbutton people meters streaming meters watermarks settop box data smart TV data and server data Nielsenamp8217s newest PPM is wearable as a wristwatch or jewelry and it will be gradually replacing its pushbutton peoplemetersIn a few years Nielsen and the MRC will be asking the industry to make a decision as to which way to define an impression based on a person saying they were watching or listening or based on that person merely being located in the room with a TV radio or digital advertising medium that is turned on and offering images andor soundsI suspect at that time we may opt for the nonsubjective approach as many of the European countries have It produces higher audience numbers which sellers like and it is scientifically defensible based on strong evidence from academia and neuroresearch companies among others which proves that ads can influence people even below the level of conscious awareness So even if they were not consciously watching or listening they could be affected by an adThis will be your choice as an industry It will help to start thinking about it now because the perspective is also helpful in understanding measurements of attention ad recall persuasion etcThe proliferation of these interim measures of advertising effectiveness which the Advertising Research Foundation has structured in the famous ARF Model provides another reason to define impressions as allinclusively as possible since other measurements will also be available with which to parse the most inclusive measure of impressions into degrees of intensityFinally coming back full circle to where we started since impressions are meant to measure the value brought by a media vehicle to the advertiser it can be argued that anything less than the most inclusive measure would be unfair to that media vehicle its job is to create as many opportunities as possible and so count all of those opportunities not just the cases where the advertiseramp8217s ad drew attention to the ad That would be blaming the media for what was the advertiseramp8217s responsibilityPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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What Do We Want an Impression to Mean?

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Bill Harvey

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What Do We Want an Impression to Mean?

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