Nielsen To Reprocess All Ratings Affected By Glitch, Begins Releasing Some Of It

by Joe Mandese, 6 hours ago

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Nielsen late Tuesday night updated clients on TV ratings that have been reprocessed following the discovery and disclosure of a “technical error” that caused a glitch in ratings for national broadcast networks and syndicated TV shows over a several-month period beginning March 2.

Nielsen said that following conversations with various clients, it now plans to reprocess all of the ratings from that date forward, and provided a timetable for various reprocessing updates.

Nielsen said that ratings from the week of Sept. 22nd -- the traditional start of the 2014-15 prime-time season -- have been reprocessed and reissued to Nielsen customers.

However, Nielsen said that reprocessed ratings for new season shows airing as earlier as Aug. 18 would not be released until Nov. 17 -- a couple of weeks later than the Oct. 31st date it originally told clients when it disclosed the glitch.

Nielsen In Hot Water With NYC Broadcasters

TVNewsCheck
By Harry A. Jessell

October 14, 2014 5:54 AM EDT

 

The ratings firm met last Friday with representatives of New York City stations to explain how it plans to improve the ratings by increasing the sample homes and perhaps deploying new PPM technology that make use of program audio to track what people are watching. The meeting followed concerns of the broadcasters that the June ratings were down 20% from the prior year in the key adults 25-54 demo.

      

Last Friday, Nielsen publicly acknowledged that its national TV ratings since March were flawed and that it would be reissuing the numbers at the same time as its arch-rival Rentrak was boasting of a big investment by WPP and watching its stock price soar.

That was just part of Nielsen's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Earlier in the day, at a meeting in New York, more than a dozen Nielsen executives tried to placate a large contingent of unhappy New York broadcasters who have been complaining about a sudden drop off in ratings in the No. 1 DMA last spring.

According to one broadcaster in attendance, in June the stations' aggregate ratings fell around 20% over the prior year in the key adults 25-54 demo, a loss of 2,250 ratings points that is having a big impact on revenue.

Nielsen did not promise to reissue any numbers at the meeting, the broadcaster said, but talked about improving the ratings by increasing the sample homes and perhaps deploying new PPM technology that makes use of program audio to track what people are watching.
In response to questions about the meeting from TVNewsCheck, Nielsen issued a statement attributed to Matt O'Grady, Nielsen's EVP and managing director of local media, among those at the meeting.

 

 

The statement acknowledges that Nielsen has had a "series of meetings” with New York broadcasters on what Nielsen is "doing to improve and expand our measurement capabilities for local media," but it doesn't address the broadcasters' specific complaints about the spring ratings shortfall or what Nielsen might do about them.

"Capturing a representative measurement of how consumers are viewing video across all types of platforms is the No. 1 priority for Nielsen," the statement says. "We are increasing our sample sizes and have announced 60 markets thus far — including New York — where we are adding tablet and smartphone viewing of local TV content to the ratings, and actively evaluating big data sources to add greater stability.

"We are also testing the inclusion of out-of-home viewing, and more granular qualitative data to the mix. The viewing pie is expanding and our goal is to ensure that the ratings pie grows, as well."
In addition to O'Grady, the large Nielsen delegation at the Friday meeting included Steve Hasker, global president; Brian West, COO; and Lynda Clarizo, president, U.S. media.

Among those on the broadcast side on the table were the heads of the Big Three O&O groups — Rebecca Campbell of ABC, Peter Dunn of CBS and Valari Staab of NBC — as well as the GMs of WABC and WNBC — Dave Davis and Michael Jack. Dunn doubles as the GM of WCBS.
Lew Leone, GM of WYNW and WWOR, represented Fox, while Bob Marra, station manager of WPIX, reportedly was there for Tribune.

Rentrak Finds Itself On A TV Ratings Roll

TVNewsCheck

By Adam Buckman

TVNewsCheck, October 10, 2014 3:19 PM EDT

Recent major deals by Rentrak are shaking up the Nielsen-dominated world of TV audience data. The data it derives from millions of cable and satellite set-top boxes is enhanced with data about consumer spending patterns, and many are seeing it as a needed alternative in a new-media world.

 

 

With two high-profile deals announced in just the past eight days, Rentrak appears to be gaining momentum in its challenge of Nielsen as the nation's primary provider of TV ratings.
Yesterday, Rentrak and global advertising giant WPP said WPP was acquiring a 16.7% stake in Rentrak by buying $56 million in Rentrak stock and by accepting $98 million of Rentrak stock in exchange for the TV viewing measurement unit of WPP's Kantar Media that competed with Rentrak.

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Hours later, WPP's major media buying agency, Group M, said that it would begin using the Rentrak data in its planning and buying presumably along with Nielsen numbers.
Thursday's WPP announcements came less than a week after Zenith Media and Rentrak announced jointly that Zenith would adopt Rentrak’s “massive and passive TV currency for local television buying.”

And more such developments could be on the way. “I can’t tell you [about deals that might be in the works],” Rentrak CEO Bill Livek told TVNewsCheck in a phone interview. “I will tell you that if these were seismic events, they usually come in a pattern,” he said.

Regardless of whether the deals are "seismic" enough to shake up the Nielsen-dominated world of TV audience data, they drew the attention of Wall Street. Rentrak’s stock price shot dramatically upward on Thursday with shares (NASDAQ: RENT), rising $7.56 to close at $72.07 per share, an 11% percent increase.

 

Although Rentrak and its representatives avoid mentioning the word “Nielsen” when asked about the competitive landscape in TV ratings, the company has nevertheless been positioning itself as a Nielsen alternative.

Rentrak and Nielsen use different methodologies to track TV viewership. Nielsen extrapolates viewership from small samples of homes in each TV market that are equipped with electronic boxes or are asked to record what they are watching in paper diaries.

Rentrak extracts ratings from millions of cable and satellite set-top boxes. It enhances its ratings with data about consumer spending patterns.

Without mentioning Nielsen by name, Zenith and Group M officials made clear that their involvement with Rentrak was a rebuke of the ratings leader.

“Zenith is proud to be at the beginning of a big industry change,” said Rob Jayson, chief data officer for Zenith, in a prepared statement released jointly by Rentrak and Zenith. “For the first time in industry history, we are replacing the low-response rate, highly unpredictable surveys and diaries with massive and passive measurement. We expect to see significant reductions in costs for our clients as well as dramatically improved service.… We expect that this new Rentrak-based currency will become the new gold standard for all of local TV ad spending.”

For his part, GroupM Global Chairman Irwin Gotlieb said that " legacy sample methodology simply can’t keep up" in today's fragmented mediascape.

“Television measurement needs to move toward census-based methodology. Our agencies are doing such refined targeting and segmentation, and that work can only be supported by census data," he said. "It is our hope that we can act as catalysts in moving the industry toward greater data reliability and accountability.”

On Tuesday, MediaPost.com took some of the luster off the Zenith announcement, quoting an executive there as saying that Zenith was merely conducting a three-market test of the Rentrak data.
“If we see success and increased reliability and increased performance and increased cost savings, we will roll it out to additional markets,” Zenith Optimedia Chief Data Officer Rob Jayson told MediaPost.com. “Our intention is that the test will go well. We do quite strongly believe in this.”
When asked about the Zenith deal, Livek would neither confirm nor deny the three-market test scenario. “Zenith is a client of Rentrak and they’re moving toward having us as the currency in local markets,” Livek said. “This is a process. Zenith is 100% committed to work with us in all of their local markets as the currency.”

Even before these most recent announcements, Rentrak has been busy making news. Since January, the company has been steadily growing its roster of high-profile clients, including the owned-station groups of all four broadcast networks. One network — CBS — signed up for Rentrak data. Rentrak also added several ad agencies this year — including Hill Holliday and Wyse Advertising — plus one giant producer of TV programs, Sony Pictures Television, the first (and so far only) major studio on Rentrak’s client roster.

When asked whether his goal was to displace Nielsen, Livek said he saw the two co-existing.
“We’re reinventing the measurement business, he said. "I live in reality. I believe reality is [that] we live in a world where, economically, multiple currencies exist — the British pound exists, the European euro, the Chinese RMB and down the list, along with the dollar.

“In media, it’s very simple,” he added. "We have two currencies and [Rentrak’s] currency serves a lot of purposes because of the granularity and stability" of the data it produces.But outside observers were more blunt about the Nielsen vs. Rentrak situation. “The bottom line is Nielsen has been lazy for a long time,” said Bill Hague, senior vice president of Frank N. Magid Associates, a TV consulting and research firm. “They have horrible customer service, their samples have not gotten better or bigger and competition is good.”
 

Nielsen did not immediately reply to a request for comment from TVNewsCheck.

"Traditional Don Draper-style advertisers are being replaced with so-called "Math Men."

Mad Men, AMC
Business Insider
October 13, 2014By Katie Richards

Creativity was once thought of as the heart and soul of advertising, but the rise of programmatic and the obsession with real-time bidding and targeting has made it nearly impossible to deliver a powerful piece of creative that really stands out online. 

In principle, it's simple: advertisers pick what types of people they want to reach online, set parameters around what they're willing to spend, and then let algorithm-powered software automatically buy their ads for them in live auctions, so they get the best possible price.

But here's the problem with that.

If an advertiser or a brand wants to push an ad through the programmatic pipes, the ad needs to fit a standard model. That way the ad can actually go through the complex, automated process and end up on a webpage.

Unfortunately, this means that the ad is constrained to a little box that no one really wants to look at or pay attention to: and most of the time, this is the banner ad. Even though a banner ad is plain, boring even, it's widely accepted as the standard ad unit for programmatic because it's what the technology can support. There's little room to be innovative within the constraints of a little box. 

In the past, creative people went into advertising because they wanted to design and paint on big canvases — TV screens and billboards. They literally had outsized portfolio carriers, larger than suitcases, which they took to job interviews to display their past work.

But the money is flowing out of TV and print and going online, increasingly in the form of programmatic ads. Programmatic is a growing part of the business. In the future as much as 80% of online ad transactions may be automated, some industry folks believe.

So if a person wants to earn money by being creative in advertising today, they probably don't want to be in the print or TV business. They want to be on the digital side. And, more often than not, digital is now where the money — and the stock options — are.

Not everyone is completely on board just yet though. Sir John Hegarty, a founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, recently blamed technology and data for what he calls a "creative deficit" arguing people get distracted by the technology and forget to focus on what the technology can actually deliver. 

Hegarty, who is often called an advertising traditionalist, argues new technology isn't the answer for advertisers. The idea is what really matters. He also says TV revolutionzed the ad world much more than the arrival of digital did and it's still the most powerful medium out there. 

Dylan Mouratsing, an evidence director for Manning Gottlieb OMD, dsiagrees with Hegarty's theory andtells ExchangeWire that new technology and data become a way for advertisers to build stronger, more relevant campaigns.

"One common misconception is that use of evidence straightjackets creativity," says. "This is something traditionalists struggle with, and it’s a process of education to get away from that. One of our central beliefs is that using the body of data that’s available on a given project doesn’t lead to less creativity, but actually creates a more fertile ground for original work."     

Danny Hopwood, the head of platform at Publicis Groupe's digital unit, VivaKi, says the industry should not lose hope on the creative quality of ads delivered programmatically. Hopwood argues programmatic is not actually killing creativity: "It has just taken a different guise. The increase in smart technology means you can now be creative with not just the message but the method of delivery and the audience itself," he says in a report from AOL UK on the status of programmatic advertising.

There are also a handful of companies working to create ad units that are engaging and can still be delivered through the programmatic pipes. For example, digital advertising company Undertone recently announced Virtuoso, a platform that aims to serve "high impact digital ad campaigns." In other words the company is trying to bring more dynamic ads units online, thinking outside of the standard banner ad box. 

It's not altogether impossible and many marketers feel that there's a lot of room to be creative through programmatic. The AOL UK report suggests positive feelings about the ability to be creative with programmatic are high. Almost half (48%) of marketers surveyed said programmatic actually enhances creativity, while 28% disagree and 24% felt it has no impact.

Plus, the number of active advertising technology companies is quickly growing, emphasizing there is a clear market in practices such as programmatic, despite an old-school hankering for traditional creative. Ad tech companies were a big part of this year's Cannes Lions Festival agenda, an annual event that celebrates the creativity of advertising.

So while programmatic may be killing creativity in the traditional sense — think Don Draper conjuring up the Lucky Strike "It's Toasted" campaign to a board room of adoring agency juniors — it may not be necessarily killing it all together. Instead, programmatic is creating a new era for creativity, complete with a new meaning of what it means to be creative.

Programmatic Rocket Scientist To Skeptical Ad Exec: "Robots Don't Buy Things"

 Joe Mandese, October 2, 2014, 1:55 PM

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At least not yet, Rocket Fuel CMO Eric Porres said in response to Jen Brady Thursday morning at OMMA RTB. Brady, a self-described skeptic of programmatic media-buying, is founder and CEO of Chicago-based agency Fred & Associates, and she said that as far she’s concerned, programmatic should be spelled “problematic.”

In fact, If I’m not mistaken, she used that term in a Freudian slip when she said “fraud” in programmatic media buying “totally exists,” and then went on to describe her “problematic partners” in the sector.

Or maybe she meant it literally.

In either case, she picked it up from PHD Chief Operating & Digital Officer Craig Atkinson, who kicked off of the aptly named “Can A Robot Make You Cry” panel discussion, sharing a personal anecdote about a malaprop his son made when he asked his father, “Why do you keep talking about problematic media” around the house?

Much of the panel focused on the same discussion preoccupying similar panel discussions across the industry and articles and columns in the industry trade press, including MediaPost’s.

That said, Porres believes the problematic parts of programmatic may be over-exaggerated, because the technology skeptics say is contributing to “fraud” and “non-human traffic” can also be used to shed light on the most human behaviors. You just need to know what to look at.

“Robots don’t buy things,” Porres pointed out, as an example of a metric people could utilize to understand what portion of their programmatic media buys are actually being served to humans.

Later in the morning, during a separate presentation about how a giant consumer marketer is tackling and taming the problem, Kellogg Co. Senior Manager of Digital Media Jim Kiszka demonstrated how Kellogg’s internal trading systems now scientifically account for it. Basically, he showed how they are able to factor what portion of their programmatic audience deliverability is actually viewable to people, and they benchmark their buys -- the prices they pay and how they measure the return for it -- based on that.

Currently, he said that approach has increased Kellogg’s reach of viewable impressions vs. the rest of the industry. He’s no Polyana either, noting that Kellogg’s trading team doesn’t expect to ever get to 100% viewable delivery, but it can improve and Kellogg can account for the portion that isn’t viewable. In other words, they’re using scientific methods to account for and plan their media buys.

The approach Kellogg is using, based on Kiszka’s presentation, is lightyears ahead of others in the industry and I recommend other clients and their partners take a close look at it. It is the right approach to what is still a problematic form of media-buying. Just like the other problematic areas of media-buying that the industry has confronted, adapted and improved on over time.

In terms of potentially problematic partners, I know Rocket Fuel is not one of them. And it’s not just beause of how scientific they approach the marketplace. It’s how they make their market inside of it.

“I’m being measured on my ability to deliver a human audience,” Porres explained, adding, “We don’t get paid if we don’t… We can’t afford to deliver ads to non-humans.”

That’s reason enough for me. But I don't buy media, personally or programmatically. But I do know the difference between fraud and Freud.

The Redefinition Of Television Is Leaving Advertising Behind

• by Joe Marchese, October 2, 2014, 3:33 PM
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There’s a lot of talk about redefining what is considered to be “TV” in this fast-changing media landscape. It’s appropriate that the FCC’s Media Bureau is currently mulling whether to expand the legal definition of television to include digital services (notably, though, only ones that pre-schedule their programming, so Netflix wouldn’t count here). Following on the heels of this year’s insanely digital-heavy upfronts, we in advertising are dealing with a world where what we consider to be “television” looks very different from how it did only a few years ago.

All these events bring up an important issue: If we’re redefining what television is at every turn, still, from what I can tell, the industry isn’t rushing to redefine the advertising that supports TV-quality content. As TV evolves, sticking traditional commercials on digital platforms is just going to look more dissonant than ever. Have you ever watched a TV show online and been bombarded by the same commercial for the same product multiple times, during what seems like way too many commercial breaks, and ended up hating both the advertiser and the show? That’s just a terrible user experience. Analog-style, frequency-based planning just doesn’t work in a world that’s going digital.

  

The redefinition of television may literally leave advertising behind. From Netflix to HBO Go to Amazon Prime, the most-talked-about new video players are all either subscription-based or have an ad-free premium version. If you control any portion of the massive, multibillion-dollar advertising industry, no matter how small, this should deeply concern you.

And maybe that’s why, as a fellow MediaPost writer noted earlier this week, traditional TV ad revenues are surprisingly higher than a lot of digital folks would assume, and they aren’t shifting the way we might expect them to. In fact, they’re still growing.

Here’s my theory: There simply isn’t a quality alternative for buying media in digital, at least not nearly as good as in “traditional” TV. I can tell you why TV dollars won’t go online in 10 words: TV impressions are 100% of the screen for 30 seconds. And until digital starts to face this fact, television advertising’s transformation is going to lag behind television’s own.

Key to Cross-Platform Advertising Is Creating A Single Metric

TelevisionNewsDaily

• by Manish Bhatia, Jane Clarke, October 1, 2014, 7:00 AM
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The proliferation of media devices may be a consumer’s dream, but it’s made conducting business more difficult for advertisers and publishers. Accurately accounting for audiences across TVs, computers, smartphones, tablets, and an ever-growing list of devices has created a measurement nightmare resulting in inefficient allocation of available ad inventory.

Fortunately, there is a path for our industry to make true cross-platform measurement a reality – one that can bring both buyers and sellers together through the use of a single, unduplicated metric on which both sides can transact.

Media companies would benefit by being able to sell against their entire audience, not just their digital or TV audience. Advertisers and their agencies would be able to plan more effectively and across screens, creating a unified media plan that leverages multiple touch points to reach target audiences rather than continuing to rely on inefficient and time consuming siloed campaign planning using unconnected data-sets.

How can this development of a single, unified audience metric be accomplished?

1. Develop a scalable way to measure across platforms. Traditional measurement panels are necessary but not sufficient for cross-platform measurement. While panels are fine for independently measuring each media platform, building a ‘single-source’ panel with overlapping samples across all measured media at a granular enough level is cost prohibitive for the industry.

Fortunately, unified methods of measurement that combine the benefits of person-level measurement from panels with the reporting granularity of census data hold the key to scalable cross-platform measurement. More importantly, this census data – such as tagged Web pages and apps in digital and set-top box data in TV – provides the granular touch points between platforms to produce audience de-duplication algorithms that work at the network, program and episode level.

This ability to de-duplicate audiences is fundamental to marketing. Advertisers want to know how many people they are reaching with their messages and how often, and media companies get paid according to how they can deliver on those propositions. Without the ability to de-duplicate audiences, accurate reach and frequency metrics remain a mystery.

Moreover, it leads to media being planned and bought in silos, which drives massive inefficiency in allocating dollars across the most appropriate platforms to effectively reach audiences. Efforts to estimate duplication are as limited as the approaches used. Passive, electronic, persons’ level measurement is the most accurate means to measure duplication. Once applied to a larger census based data-set, it unlocks the insights the industry needs.

2. Validate digital measurement to deliver a Human GRP comparable to TV. Digital measurement on the server-side can be messy. Cookies do not accurately measure audiences. Ad impression counts often get inflated due to non-human traffic. Many other ads are either delivered out-of-view, out-of-geography, or in non-brand safe environments.

Without the ability to validate server-side measurements and translate them into metrics that correspond to the behavior of actual humans, marketers can’t make decisions that align with their strategies. And perhaps more significantly, these metrics will not be comparable to TV audience metrics, which have historically met the reasonable standard of reaching humans with an ‘opportunity to see’ the advertising.

Therefore, digital measurement requires audience validation that cleans up the mess and can simplify it in terms of a single Human GRP that is comparable to TV. While the concept and usage of GRPs is not new in digital, recent advancements in viewability and NHT detection promise to make this metric even more precise, delivering a true Human GRP. An accurate Human GRP makes it easier for the industry to plan, buy and sell advertising across platforms.

3. Build a flexible system that can accommodate an evolving definition of cross-platform. As device proliferation continues – for example, Apple unveiled yet another screen with its new smartwatch – the challenges of cross-platform measurement have the potential to become more complex by relying on traditional measurement methods. By adopting a scalable system that can easily integrate new platforms into a unified view of cross-platform behavior, the media industry will be able to jump from screen to screen as seamlessly as consumers do.

This means avoiding multiyear R&D efforts to figure out how to incorporate new platforms into the mix and having the ability to quickly allocate dollars to the right media platforms. If there’s one thing we’ve learned in digital, it’s that the landscape changes constantly – why reinvent the wheel every time that happens?

Adopting this approach to cross-platform audiences and advertising enables a single metric on which media buyers and sellers can easily transact. It means media companies get paid for the full audience they deliver and advertisers can spend more wisely to achieve maximum impact from their campaigns, a natural win-win that the entire industry can rally around.