Why We Need Brand Specific Commercial Ratings Right Now

By Will Waugh

The ANA Television Advertising Committee released a position paper yesterday supporting the industry’s growing movement towards television commercial ratings. Today’s marketing executives are pressured to justify and evaluate their media investments in meaningful and precise ways and this development helps achieve that by providing marketers with a deeper understanding of program and commercial viewership.

The Committee believes the need for accountability is especially great in television advertising, where $70 billion is spent annually on commercial time. Here are some more reasons:

• Serving as a copy testing tool to identify the stronger and weaker executions within a commercial, enabling advertisers to pull (or fix) weaker spots and heavy up on stronger ones.
• Functioning as an indicator for commercial wear out.
• Providing a better understanding of impact differences related to such factors as pod position, length of creative, and national versus local placement.
• Establishing the value of in-program and in-game features and sponsorships.
• Helping marketers understand how DVR usage habits impact all of the above.

I have sat in on this debate since I joined the ANA two years ago. There is a lot of finger pointing back and forth. One item that sticks out in my mind is the voice of one advertiser who controls several hundred millions of dollars.

"If TV does not become as accountable as all of the new media, then advertisers will leave. When we can't explain to our executives where $100 million in TV is going but can get extremely granular with a million dollar online or mobile execution -- there's a problem."

MediaPost talks about it here. The New York Times expands on the topic here. And the International Herald Tribune even moreso here. As a reminder, Andy Jung of Kelloggs will expound on the issue further at next week's TV Forum.

Technorati tags: commercial ratings television

Comments

[WillWaugh]

Pali

It is all about accountability. I agree with everything you said. We know not everyone is seeing the the ads because a bathroom break/surfing. We just need to know when individual ads are on the screen. They can do it in Vietnam, why can't we?

[Palisades Park]

"I meant SEEING the ads".