COMMENTARY

Good Data Is Critical To The TV Ad Industry, Market Volatility Impacts Collection

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Yesterday

The U.S. stock market lives and dies on specific, predictable information. The advertising marketplace, as well.

If buyers sense that information is unreliable, incomplete, or otherwise, the stock market will react. That means negative results for all parties concerned.

The Dow Jones Industrial Index, S&P 500, and the Nasdaq have been in that unstable, reactionary period over the last several days — and its reflected in severe market drops.

Marketers don’t necessarily make key media and advertising decisions on stock-market moves. They look at key economic data.

Volatility is the result of the uncertainty of the coronavirus -- perhaps for the near-term. If consumers are staying indoors -- not shopping or perhaps working less due to restrictions or otherwise -- that impacts the economy.

The question that keeps being asked: What kind of near-term, mid-term, long-term damage will the Covid-19 virus really do to economic growth, to employment, and, tangentially, to the media?

The stock market counts on predictable data. Virus data has been anything but that. In the U.S., a country of more than 300 million -- with thousands being tested so far and 804 positive U.S. cases out of 117,000 worldwide -- there are gaps in that knowledge.

Mortality numbers are the major natural focus. But analysts have said they don’t trust the ‘denominator’ in this calculation -- that is the number of those who have the actual virus. Due to the lack of testing at scale -- and because many are probably asymptomatic -- we don’t have a complete picture.

The bottom line is: “We don’t know how many people are sick,” says Robinson Meyer, staff writer for The Atlantic on MSNBC on Monday. And the lack of such data is making things unstable.

How does this relate to TV? Marketers always figure out where the TV marketplace is, data-wise. While there are many factors that contribute to this, much comes from supply (ratings points/impressions) and demand (TV advertising money currently working). Economic data has a strong effect on the latter.

Right now, TV advertising market data is appropriately taking a back seat to the more pressing public health concerns and its data needs. Still, if the latter doesn’t get the information it needs, the former will suffer.