Recountng the audience: Nielsen under a little pressure

October 14th, 2006

A day after Nielsen released a much-anticipated update to clients explaining how it defines “national commercial minutes,” the TV ratings researcher issued a correction to the data used to support its rationale. The gaff comes one week before some of Nielsen’s biggest clients will hold their own ad hoc summit to deliberate on how commercial minutes should be defined and how Nielsen should measure their audiences.
“The ‘Definition of a Commercial Minute’ attachment to this communication included a spreadsheet with commercial-minute-to-program-minute indices. These indices were incorrect,” Nielsen disclosed on Wednesday, adding that the faulty data has no bearing on Nielsen’s preliminary definition of a commercial minute.
But the timing of the glitch couldn’t be worse as Nielsen makes a last ditch effort to sway clients in advance of their summit Sept. 21 at NBC’s offices in Rockefeller Center. Nielsen, which said it is leaning toward a definition that defines any minute containing even one-second of a commercial as a “national commercial minute,” has asked its clients to weigh in on its definition by Sept. 20, the day before the summit.

As they say, When the shit hits the fan it never spreads evenly. More pressing questions that are harder to answer.

And Upfront Lackluster, Clients Consider New Media Platforms For Ad Budgets

One of Madison Avenue’s most influential media buyers recommends that clients set aside 10 percent of their budgets for new media opportunities–a trend that will continue to negatively affect the upfront.
Calling this year’s upfront “lackluster,” Magna Global Chairman-CEO Bill Cella said yesterday that clients are redirecting $5 million to $10 million of their traditional budgets to broadband, mobile and other platforms.

Its still a drop in the ocean but it is the start of a more significant trickle and trickles eventually become a flood. Although ESPN’s mobile failure is used as evidence that mobile maybe a Red Herring

While a broadband ad model seems to be taking shape, Cella was more circumspect about the prospects of the mobile platform, throwing cold water on bullish projections that it can become a billion-dollar market in the next three years

So if you want to know why read Tomi’s excellent post How can ESPN Mobile fail in America?

And Transmedia marketing starts to debut in a limited way – see its all about context…

In conjunction with its fall marketing push, ABC also announced that it was offering free iTunes downloads of last season’s final performances–as well as special highlight shows–”Desperate Housewives,” “Lost,” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” This year, ABC is putting a lot of its marketing efforts back on those three big programs.

Via Media Daily News

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