Nielsen Media Research is promising that its new commercial ratings system will go active by November, to the delight of many media buyers, and it stands to revolutionize television if buyers use it instead of program ratings to negotiate ad prices.
But one noted researcher is already finding flaws with the Nielsen plan, saying the numbers will not measure commercial ratings but rather an average minute of viewing that may include only a few seconds of advertising.
In a report yesterday, Magna Global USA's top researcher, Steve Sternberg, says he's somewhat disturbed by the Nielsen plan, as he put it. Sternberg notes that the new system will not necessarily offer actual ad ratings but rather ratings for the minutes in which some advertising airs. Writes Sternberg: "These are not commercial ratings, nor are they an acceptable surrogate."
Sternberg finds several flaws with the new system, and one is that the measured minute might include a portion of programming, which would skew the rating.
"It would be averaging together minutes that contain both program and commercial time,” Sternberg tells Media Life. "We don't know how inflated these 'averages' will be, but it will vary significantly by commercial pod."
Sternberg notes that Nielsen currently defines a commercial minute as including any advertising, even only a few seconds within a program minute. He suggests determining a more realistic definition, perhaps including a 30-second threshold, meaning at least half the average minute rating includes advertising.
A Magna Global study of commercial pods earlier this year found that viewing drops off an average of 7 percent during commercials on broadcast and 11 percent on cable. Media buyers have long known that ratings dip during commercials but haven’t had the tools to do anything about it. The question has always been how much the falloff might be for a particular show, or even within a show.
The Magna study found that the dropoff varies depending on where a commercial pod is in a program, what genre is and how the program is doing in the ratings.
Sternberg contends that the best way to get a true measure of commerical viewership is with a system of second-by-second ratings. Buyers would then be able to track how many people are watching a given commercial spot. But to implement that, Nielsen would likely have to update its people meters, which currently measure viewing every 2.5 seconds.
Still, media buyers overall are looking forward to the new rating systems, flaws or no, and it will likely be the standard by which ads are priced at next spring's upfront market.
Whether it will lead to lower ad prices is another matter.
"You could make a claim that ratings are going to decline. But ratings have been declining for years and yet prices continue to go up," says Brad Adgate, Horizon Media's senior vice president and director of research. Supply and demand will still steer pricing, as in the past.
Adgate's not convinced that second-by-second ratings would give media buyers much useful information. "Plus, people tune out of commercials in other ways," he notes, whether it's reading the mail or making a phone call. "The people meter is not designed to measure that. There are other factors that go into whether my communications are effective, or whether the viewer is engaged."
Nielsen's initial plan is to offer live-plus-seven-day data, though they may offer live and live-plus-same-day commercial ratings. Sternberg complains that seven-day ratings are useless to time-sensitive advertisers, promoting a retail sale or a movie premiere for example. And he calls the planned inclusion of VCR recordings an embarrassment:
"Previous studies have indicated that at least a third of VCR recordings are not played back, and that at least two-thirds of playback involves fast-forwarding through commercials. Nobody debates this anymore."
Samantha Melamed is a staff writer for Media Life.
