Nielsen Research and the Future of General Advertising
November 17, 2006
A colleague of mine, writing about the Internet, defended broadcast advertising as legitimate in "certain circumstances." He cited his own experience with a retail clothing store in Manhattan. He said the TV ads he bought were the primary reason his store became a big hit.
As a longtime denigrator of broadcast advertising, I am curious about his experience. I have no doubt that he is telling the truth - and the truth may be that his TV spots more than paid for themselves in increased sales. But I'd like to know how carefully he measured the response to those ads.
When you are launching a retail business, you generally do so with a multi-media, multi-marketing approach. You do direct mail, circulars, posters, local print advertising, local radio and television. Without measuring the response to those efforts, how can you be sure which are working for you?
You can't.
But since television has always offered such a broad-brush approach to advertising, allowing a business to reach an entire market in a matter of seconds, it's been hard not to be attracted to it. If you had the money to spend, you almost certainly allocated some of it to that kind of image advertising.
In the 21st century, that is changing.
As Chris Anderson explains in The Long Tail, the combination of the computer and the Internet have completely reversed the traditional way consumers use the media. In the old days, a handful of TV channels, advertising a handful of commercials, would routinely reach millions of people. Nowadays, anyone with a computer can access thousands of products and programming that is individually tailored for him.
This is hastening the demise of broadcast advertising and increasing the pace at which direct marketing is growing.
A case in point: the Nielsen rating service.
Nielsen Media Research will soon be reporting on how many TV viewers watch commercials.
As advertisers become increasingly aware of the limitations of broadcast advertising and the advantages of direct response (particularly on the Internet), they are becoming increasingly insistent that their media buys produce results.
Results could never be directly measured, but so long as Nielsen was measuring TV shows, advertisers were somewhat satisfied. Nowadays, with TV programming being available online and with the popularity of digital video recorders (like TiVo), it's not clear that consumers are watching commercials at all.
According to USA Today, Forrester Research predicts that almost half of American households will have a DVR by 2009. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that in another few years the entire country will be fast-forwarding through commercials.)
But Nielsen is having trouble launching the new program, because their clients have mixed feelings about how a commercial's popularity should be measured. Broadcast and cable companies have different ideas about how Nielsen should measure viewing - and Nielsen's main clients, the television networks themselves, aren't sure they want this information published ... for obvious reasons.
posted by M. Masterson @ 1:14 PM,
2 Comments:
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At 6:48 AM,
Carole Alexander said...
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Hi! As a very busy person with many irons in the fire, I have long been taping (on VSH) all programs that interest me. Yes, I definitely fast forward through all commercials, and have been doing so since the late '80's.
I can barely squeeze enough time to watch a show or two per week, why on Earth would I want to waste my valuable time on commercials?
Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to share! CA -
At 8:48 AM,
Bob Rutz said...
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Here's a challenge:
A big TV advertiser with lots of cash but increasingly desperate for ads that work, comes to you for advice on how to get people to watch his commercials. He doesn't want your better alternatives to TV commercials; he just wants you to apply your acknowledged expertise to improving the bang for a buck he gets from his TV commercials.
He is ready to pay you really big bucks to do this. Suppose you decide you want to take him on and do the best possible job you can. Applying the techniques you've been teaching us, what are the Top 3 strategies you would come up with?
With the megabucks obviously still being spent on increasingly far out, meaningless and asinine image advertising commercials in a desperate attempt to keep a few viewers, your good answers could launch a very lucrative new business.
Invite your friends to a brainstorming party, you supply the beer, sell the edited CD with your summary and top recommendations for $500, and donate 10% to me for the idea.
BobRutz@MadisonCounty.net
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