Blog Archives

Mobile TV Content To Be Included In Traditional TV Measurement

10/28/2013

by Wayne Friedman, Monday, October 28, 2013

Nielsen reports that software will be available in November that will let clients include mobile digital TV content from smartphones and tablets in traditional TV measurement for the 2014-2015 TV season.

"This unified encoding approach for video enables measurement to follow content across screens and ad models,” says Megan Clarken, executive vice president, global product leader for Nielsen, in a release.

This will allow TV networks, content publishers and others to follow video content across screens and ad models. For the last several months, Nielsen has been sharing this software with clients and industry leaders in how it plans to incorporate audiences viewing TV content on digital devices.

But Nielsen says there are restrictions.

For example, if a broadcaster makes a TV show available for viewing on a digital device, it needs to meet “the ad load and timeline requirements for TV ratings.”

Recently, in other early efforts to measure combined TV and digital content, Nielsen said it could only be measured if TV programs had the same exact amount of advertising time.

Content that is not eligible for traditional TV ratings -- due to elapsed crediting time, dynamic ad insertion or because it is originated on the Internet -- will be included in Nielsen Digital Ratings, specifically Nielsen Digital Program Ratings for content ratings and Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings for the ad rating, the company notes.

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Instagram Launches Advertising

10/7/2013

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by Mark Walsh, Thursday, October 3, 2013

Instagram on Thursday announced that the popular photo-sharing app will begin running ads in the “next couple of months” as it seeks to build a sustainable business.

The Facebook-owned company said U.S. users would begin seeing “an occasional ad” in their Instagram feeds from brands they don't necessarily follow through the service. To help ensure against a potential negative reaction from its 150 million monthly active users, the company assured it would move slowly in introducing advertising.

“We'll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community,” stated a company blog post today. The company sparked a user backlash (and litigation) and late last year after it changed language in its terms of service that appeared to reserve the right to license people's photos to advertisers.

After restoring the old terms of service in December, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom stated that when the company did introduce ad products, it would “come back to our users and explain how we would like our advertising business to work.”

In an effort to give users some control over the ads they see, Instagram today said it would allow people to hide ads they don’t like and the opportunity to provide feedback “about what didn't feel right.” It also reiterated that users “own their own photos and videos” and that the launch of advertising would not change that policy.

Instagram only debuted video capability on the service in June, allowing users to create 15-second clips, in response to the growing popularity of six-second videos on Vine. Marketers then were already speculating about the possibility of creating paid 15-second spots on Instagram, aside from posting videos to their own accounts.

Facebook itself has long been rumored to roll out video advertising, planning to charge between $1 million and $2.4 million for TV commercial-style ads that would run in users' news feeds. But the company has delayed the expected fall launch of video ads as it continues to work on a format that users won’t find disruptive, according to an Ad Age report.

Instagram on Thursday didn’t provide details on the things like specific formats, frequency or pricing of image-based or video ads, and the company did not respond to a media inquiry late Thursday. But in its blog post, it told users to "stay tuned" for more details on its advertising plans.

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Broadcast Nets Cater To Slightly Older Demos

10/2/2013

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by Wayne Friedman, Tuesday, October 1, 2013

After one week of the new season, TV viewers are skewing slightly older for the broadcast networks versus a year ago. The median age for the five English-language broadcast networks is now 53.4 years -- up from 53 years.

Two networks were in the 50+ territory a year ago -- CBS (57.9) and ABC (54.7). Now -- a year later -- three networks fall into that range: CBS at 57.8, ABC at 53.3, and NBC at 50.8. A year ago, NBC was at a median age of 48.4.

Fox has also moved up. Last year, it was just about tied with CW for the lowest median age -- with Fox at 43.8 and CW at 43.6. Now Fox has added on 2.3 years to reach 46.1 years. So far, CW has declined by a full year -- now at 42.6.

For the second straight year, NBC is leading in the first week among 18-49 viewers with a Nielsen 3.13 average rating -- slightly up from a 3.08.

ABC is also higher -- at 2.30, up from a 2.22, while CBS has dropped to a 2.23 from a 2.35. Fox, at a 1.83, is also down versus its 2.18 score of a year ago. CW is even at a 0.27. The five-network 18-49 rating average is a 2.18 -- down 3% from a year ago, when it was at a 2.24.

CBS was the most-watched network in the first week, with 10.31 million viewers; it was at 10.63 million last year. NBC is next at 9.8 million, from 8.65 million a year ago. ABC was at 7.97 million for the first week; it was at 8.22 million in 2012. Fox earned 5.05 million in 2013 and 5.74 million a year ago, while CW earned 779,000 this year in the first week. It was at 688,000 in 2012.

Overall, the five-network total viewer prime-time average was 7.69 million. In 2012, it was 7.67 million. Brad Adgate, senior vice president and corporate media director for Horizon Media says four of the networks so far appear to have some strong new shows in the first week of the season.

There are five new shows in the top 20 among 18-49 viewers: ABC’s “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D”; CBS’ “The Crazy Ones”; NBC’s “The Blacklist”; Fox’s “Sleepy Hollow”; and ABC's “The Goldbergs.” Last year there were two -- NBC’s “Revolution” and ABC’s “The Neighbors."

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Social Ups TV, Marketers Benefit From Dual-Screen Approach

10/1/2013

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by R. J. Taylor, Tuesday, October 1, 2013

There are a few things I look forward to in the fall – football, chili and Halloween. But, above all else, I look forward to the highly anticipated fall television season, which is now upon us with all its glamour and glitz. Consumers will be glued to their televisions to watch new episodes and series premieres with their mobile phones, laptops and/or tablets. What’s the fun in watching a show if you can’t immediately share your comments, feelings and thoughts with the social universe?

Recently, there have been numerous research reports pointing to two television trends; social media’s impact on broadcast viewership and the dual screen phenomenon. We’ll look at social media trends first.

Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo stated publicly that Twitter has the ability to extend the reach of television, with the number of tweets about specific shows multiplying as much as 100 times during first-run broadcasts. Historically, these research reports have all been based on the correlation that popular television shows receive more tweets than unpopular shows. Of course, that should make complete sense to most people.

However, a new research report from Nielsen points to the idea of social media’s impact in an entirely new way. Nielsen found that in 29% of episode instances, more tweets actually resulted in higher viewership, showing an actual causal relationship between social media usage and viewership. The findings are interesting because they push the notion that Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites can sell more advertising to major broadcast entities to push fan engagement.

“Using time series analysis, we saw a statistically significant causal influence indicating that a spike in TV ratings can increase the volume of tweets, and, conversely, a spike in tweets can increase tune-in,” said Paul Donato, Nielsen’s chief research officer. “This rigorous, research-based approach provides our clients and the media industry with a better understanding of the interplay between Twitter and broadcast TV viewing.”

Now let’s take a look at the dual screen phenomenon.

The same Nielsen report shows an even greater convergence of the dual-screen lifestyle of the consumer. All screens are starting to overlap and this consumer trend has implications for all of us in the marketing and communication world.

In addition to the Nielson report findings is the fact that the mobile environment is growing exponentially among consumers in the United States and abroad. Return Path recently released data showing that over 47% of emails are opened via a mobile device. With email ranking as the top form of communication between brands and consumers, this is an important point to consider when building out your digital marketing platform, whether entertainment or b-to-b.

Marketers take note! The dual screen phenomenon – integrating mobile and social media into the TV viewing experience – is undeniable, and marketers must take advantage of the dual-screen, multi-channel consumer world.

Marketers need to use technology and data to make better decisions to connect with consumers. In the end, a marketer’s ability to connect to consumers at the right time, on any device, across all channels will be the support that drives their business to either survive or die.

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Mobile TV Content To Be Included In Traditional TV Measurement

Instagram Launches Advertising

Broadcast Nets Cater To Slightly Older Demos

Social Ups TV, Marketers Benefit From Dual-Screen Approach

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