Nielsen shelves rating system for ads

NEW YORK - Nielsen Media Research has put off indefinitely its
first-ever ratings system for commercials, primarily because the people
who would buy it can't agree on what they want.

The system, which had already been delayed, was scheduled to start
operation on Dec. 11.

For years, Nielsen's clients had been content to receive ratings
information on individual shows, which didn't break out specifically
who was watching during the commercials. Now companies want to know
this, because digital video recorders give viewers the opportunity to
speed through commercials and because the Internet offers other
advertising options.

"The clients in general agree that the rating of commercial minutes is
something that is coming and needs to come but the form that it needs
to take is something that has not been agreed upon," said Gary Holmes,
spokesman for Nielsen Media Research, on Friday.

The system Nielsen was set to start would measure how many people
watched a commercial when it was broadcast live or on DVR in the
ensuing seven days.

Advertising agencies have resisted this. They prefer to simply see the
ratings for commercials as they have aired live, as opposed to DVR

videonovels...

.

I agree with the Advertisers. There's no point counting commercials
recorded on VCRs or DVRs, since we viewers just fast-forward through
them.

nfitz...

But do they? Am I the only one who stops fast-fowarding, and starts
watching a visually interesting commercial that I haven't seen before?

Mark Nobles...

You are not the only one. And they don't necessarily have to be
visually interesting; I always watch the man-law commercials, even
though all the laws relate to beer and I don't drink. Oops, I probably
shouldn't have told you that.

Doesn't happen often - maybe once every couple of hours of TV. But

telenovels...

19 minutes per hour == ~38 commercials per hour. And you say "once
every couple hours", so that means you watch 1 out of every ~4 hours ==
1 out of ~150 commercials.

Hmmm.

That means if a commercial was watched by 5% of homes during the live
broadcast, then the number of people who watched the commercial off the
VCR/DVR would only be

0.03%

Trivial and could be safely ignored/ not measured by Nielsen.

nfitz...

Ah, but that assumes that people watching on PVR radomally select
which commercials to view. I expect that that most people will be
stopping at the same few commercials. And if I was the advertisers, I
would like to know which ones!

Might be an interesting study ...

telenovels...

Well the advertisers disagree. They consider commercials on VCR or DVR
to be not worth countring, and they are pressuring Nielsen to exclude
those commercials from the "Ad Ratings".

it happens - about 50% of the time for movie ads.

ratings that included commercials that viewers might have sped through.
There's also an ongoing debate within the industry about whether to
include DVR ratings at all when setting ad rates. They currently don't.

Broadcast networks are interested in the DVR rates because with more
measured viewers they would likely get more advertising revenues.

Cable networks prefer ratings without the DVRs. Partly because of the
preponderance of sports and news on cable, their shows aren't recorded
as much as shows on broadcast networks.

Before starting the service, Nielsen wants its competing constituencies
to reach some agreement for which standard will be used, Holmes said.
He would not say how many entities had already signed up for the
service.