Tag Archives: Nielsen

October 3, 2012 · 10:12 am

Debating The Second Screen

Tonight is the first of several debates in the current campaign for president and I’m very much looking forward to it. These things are great theater even if they’re usually not particularly informative. I liken them to trade shows – no one ever makes any huge news at them unless they make a mistake. The big stuff is saved for an event one can completely orchestrate and the debates (or trade shows) don’t qualify.

I think, however, that these events might be a bit different this time around and it has nothing to do with the candidates themselves. They will not answer the question asked but instead will put out whatever talking point tested well. They generally won’t get too specific about anything and they’ll probably spend more time on things that have very little to do with solving the challenges that face the country and more to do with the loud nonsense that seems to surround our elections. One thing will be very different, however, and that may make all the difference.

85 percent of tablet owners use the device while watching TV, according to one study and Nielsen says 45 percent of Americans use their tablet while watching TV daily.  Throw in smartphone use and suddenly there is a majority of people conversing and fact-checking in real time during the debates.  In addition, one hopes that there will be sentiment analysis pushed out by the major firms in that field as we go.  I wonder if either campaign is smart enough to be monitoring that during the debate and if either candidate will be told to adjust anything during a break? It’s sort of the digital version of the positive/negative lines CNN usually runs based on a panel twisting dials.

Lincoln knew you can’t fool all of the people all of the time and given that there will be real-time fact checking happening concurrently tonight, I don’t think these guys will even be able to fool all of the people some of the time.  Another example of how technology has changed media and politics for the better?  I think so.  What do you think?

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April 19, 2012 · 10:14 am

Trust Me

For you trivia buffs in the audience, there once was a TV game show called “Who Do You Trust?” The host of the show was a struggling comic named Johnny Carson and a year into the run he picked up a guy named Ed McMahon as his announcer sidekick. The rest is television history.

That bit of history has very little to do with today’s topic other than it asks the question the study I want to highlight answers. Who do you trust? For consumers, the answer appears to be one another.  Nielsen released its Global Trust in Advertising Survey and it shows that

92% of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising, an increase of 18% since 2007. Online consumer reviews are the second most trusted form of advertising with 70% of global consumers surveyed online indicating they trust this platform, an increase of 15% in four years.

That’s the good news.  The bad?

…While 47% of consumers around the world say they trust paid television, magazine, and newspaper ads, confidence declined by 24%, 20% and 25% respectively since 2009.

You can read more about this here but the data reinforces the fact that we’re in the midst of a huge transition in marketing.  While most brands are still making the bulk of their marketing investment in paid media, the messages those media disseminate are declining in effectiveness as consumers find other sources of credible information to help with purchase decisions.  Visibility and relevance are not the same thing.

More brands are making efforts in what’s popularly called “earned media.”  They hire an intern to monitor message broads and social media while at the same time they spend millions paying creative types and media buys to work on their TV and print.  While I’m not for a minute suggesting the abandonment of traditional media, perhaps it’s time to look at reallocating resources better to reflect modern realities?  The money spent on the last two titles on your media plan could be working a lot more effectively elsewhere in media more trusted by your consumers.

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March 29, 2012 · 9:36 am

LCD

If you managed to get through middle school math (I’m hopeful that means most of you), you’re familiar with the term “Lowest Common Denominator.” In math it’s a way to combine unlike fractions by finding a common ground. In business, it’s a way to screw yourself up. You see, there’s another nonmathematic use of LCD and it refers to the lowest or least sophisticated level of something, and that’s the subject of today’s screed.

As anyone who has worked in broadcasting will tell you, the ratings system is a sort of shared myth. Nielsen puts out numbers, TV executives believe them and TV buyers believe the TV executives. Of course, it says right on the front of the ratings book that they’re only accurate up to a point, and like any number based on a sample the results are really a range. That range can be pretty wide as the number of folks in the sample who did something declines (so the published rating for American Idol is probably closer to the truth than the rating for a show ranked 125).

Which is why I find this disturbing:

TubeMogul is bringing Online Campaign Ratings to its RTB video ad platform. The agreement between TubeMogul and Nielsen means advertisers and agency trading desks can cross-reference GRPs for audience age and gender demographics with impressions and clicks to get a fuller sense of a campaign’s performance.

Simple announcement which a number of folks covered.  Except, of course, when one reads further:

While TubeMogul is able to relay metrics like impressions and clicks in real-time, Nielsen’s GRP numbers are only available daily, as with their broadcast GRP metrics. Also TubeMogul’s advertisers will have to log in to the Nielsen dashboard separately to view GRP numbers alongside metrics on TubeMogul’s platform.

In other words, we’re bringing down digital’s great system of non-sampled measurement to the LCD of TV.  That’s bad business in my book.  I realize that the advertising ecosystem isn’t quite able yet to deal with a completely different set of metrics, especially metrics presented in real-time, but the further we dumb down the standards the more likely it is that those lower standards become the norm instead of temporary fixes.

Digital measurement isn’t perfect.  Faulty implementations, disreputable folks cheating via bots and other ways, and an overwhleming amount of data we don’t often present well are issues.  But even with these and other faults the reporting and accuracy is better than what we used in TV, which any TV or agency person will tell you is pretty much a fantasy if you get them talking over a drink.

We can do better!

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