ANA, Nielsen Confident on New Style TV Ad Ratings

In the US, joint tests by The Nielsen Company and the Television Advertising Committee of the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) have paved the way for the provision of individual or 'brand-specific' commercial ratings, the partners claim.

Viewing of commercials is currently reported as the average of all commercial minutes viewed live or in playback during a particular television program. For the In-Home Commercial Ratings Test, of which phase two has just been completed, participating advertisers have encoded their commercials using Ad-ID, the same technology Nielsen uses to give unique codes to television programs, to measure how many people watch the individual commercials.

The partners say accuracy rates were high, opening the door to measuring commercial viewing dirrectly in the home, although further refinements will be made including removing the need to separately encode commercials for national, local, and syndicated television. The partners say the process and timing of C3 ratings could also be improved, and that they will explore the potential for local commercial ratings.

ANA President and CEO Bob Liodice says the tests are 'leaps in the right direction for our industry, and validate all of our work in the area of brand-specific commercial ratings'. Nielsen boss Susan Whiting comments: 'We applaud the ANA for their leadership in this important initiative, which could lead to a better way to measure how people watch commercials. This test has shown that we can develop the technical ability to produce ratings for specific commercials.'

Nielsen has proposed a third stage of the pilot, testing a new audio-detection technology, and requiring advertiser and agency participation are necessary to ensure that Ad-ID is used as the commercial identifier and that all new commercials are audio encoded.

Founded in 1910, ANA's membership includes more than 350 companies with 9,000 brands and more than $250 billion in combined marketing communications and advertising spend.

Nielsen is online at www.nielsen.com , while details of the pilots are at www.ana.net/brandspecificcommercialratings .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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