Fewer TV Ads Correlates With Program, Commercial Success

• by Wayne Friedman , 7 hours ago

While many factors still contribute to a TV commercial's success, less commercials in a particular pod -- a group of TV spots -- has the highest importance.

According to a new study from Comscore and Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, the relative importance of the number of commercials in a pod posted a “high” number -- 104.3 (the sum of weight attributes).

The second most important factor was the TV program's originality where a commercial is airing (which includes rerun factors) which had a 97.3 number. Somewhat lower importance went to “ad pod placement” (85.9) and “ad duration” (85.4).

Comscore says: “Ad pod placement or the placement position of the ad in the pod and ad duration are still important in influencing viewing declines, but less so. While these findings may not be new on their own, they demonstrate that in combination, these four attributes can accurately predict viewership declines of ads in linear TV.”

The study applies Syracuse University’s machine learning to Comscore’s second-by-second television viewing data, program ratings, and commercial ratings to identify key attributes and patterns that predict commercial viewership.

Comscore says one key analysis comes from “The Big Bang Theory” from September 2016 to February 2018, where a combination of program originality/rerun, ad duration, the number of ads in a pod, and number of pods in a program had more than 80% accuracy in predicting commercial viewership declines.