For 50 years, television ratings tracked the number of people watching television shows. Sounds logical, but for advertisers hoping to reach those eyeballs, it was a hit-and-miss process. Some of us got really good at bolting from the room during commercial clusters.
In the digital world, it became even easier to avoid commercials. Simply fast-forward the digital video recorder without leaving the couch. Now, the ratings system is playing catch-up to technology.
Advertisers who put flashy come-ons on the Web can track exactly how many people click through their message. They want the same specificity from television about who’s watching what.
Because television is now delivered on DVRs and cellphones, in sports bars, college dorms and on airplanes, it only makes sense that old-style ratings missed a growing chunk of the audience.
Recently advertisers started demanding that A.C. Nielsen more accurately measure the number of people who actually watch their commercials.
The networks resisted, worried that if advertisers saw a drop in numbers during commercial breaks, they would take their business elsewhere (hello, Internet). The networks feared losing dollars they collect on sales of their airtime for those 15-, 30- and 60-second spots.
Silly them.
The networks gave in – and now are cashing in. Turns out more people see commercials via DVR playback in the day or three after the original airing than catch them live. Hard to believe, but that’s what Nielsen’s claiming.
The surprise, for an avid commercial zapper, is that people are actually watching more commercials when they play back their favorite shows on DVRs – and roughly 18 percent of U.S. homes now have one.
NBC’s “The Office” scored highest in terms of commercial ratings versus live program ratings when three days of DVR playback were included.
Nielsen figures it this way: “Altogether, viewing to the commercial minutes, on average, in ‘The Office’ after three days of DVR playback was 108 percent of the total viewing level for the live program itself.”
Other series with higher ratings for the commercials after three days than in the first broadcast were “Family Guy,” “Bones,” “Smallville,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “24,” “My Name Is Earl” and “Jericho” – a cross-section of young- and old-skewing shows.
Nielsen is shifting to “anytime, anywhere” ratings, measuring viewership of TV streamed on the Internet or watched on portable media devices.
Nielsen’s “out of home” measurements, now in a testing phase but effective in 2008, will count folks watching on health-club treadmills, in airports, hotels and on subways. The company is testing two personal measuring devices called “Go Meters,” one like a cellphone, the other more like an MP3 player.
“In the current upfront (the ritual in advance of the TV season when the bulk of commercial spending is completed), many (ad) agencies analyzed how people watch, in live and delayed modes,” said Lyle Schwartz, a managing partner of Group M, one of New York’s biggest advertising-buying companies. “We found that in delayed mode, about 60 percent of commercials are skipped. The networks want value for that 40 percent.”
Extra hundreds of millions of dollars will flow to the networks as a result.
In the latest number crunching, for instance, the live ratings for “The Office” and “Lost” indicated zero growth. “When we took a look at how people watch, 20 percent of the audience is watching in delayed mode,” Schwartz said. Added in, that’s a big jump.
Why only count three days? Many big clients have time- specific messages, like movie studios advertising the weekend openings.
Schwartz terms this summer’s findings “a victory for all parties to better assess what we’re buying and give the client better information on what’s being seen. It’s good for TV. It’s good for clients.”
The question is how it will affect viewers. The industry knows that fat commercial clusters, sometimes as long as eight minutes, annoy viewers. Will advertisers switch to shorter, more frequent interruptions?
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
