NOTE: I
actually started to cry from sheer joy when reading this. Just keep that in mind.PreTesting, a company founded by Lee Weinblatt, is taking the concepts of ratings and viewer impact to the world of TV commercials. PreTesting will put digital boxes in 35,000 homes that will measure the effectiveness of the ads that are shown, whether they're watched live or after a delay via DVR. There are so many good things in the article I can't begin to count them.
Let's start this off with a basic premise. The TV networks have been making ad agencies play their game by their rules using their equipment on their field for, essentially, ever. They say a program will get so many viewers months before the show airs and sell ad time based on that number. The ad agencies then come up with someting "clever" or "edgy" that they think will help sales skyrocket and buy time on the programs that have been made available. Said ad then fails to deliver, despite whatever buzz might be created, on the basic goal of selling the product being advertised. Rinse, repeat and occasionally throw in a talking animal, because that never stops being funny.
The problem is that no one really knows if the ads are being watched. DVRs have made this doubly questionable since it's so easy to fast-forward through the commercials. Even before that, though, the average ad block in a TV show was a great length to hit the bathroom or get something to drink. No one has been able to say "X" number of people watched an ad and it's even harder to track follow-through intent and purchase because the Target checkout woman doesn't ask why you're buying Tide instead of All, now does she?
Nielsen has come close with their minute-by-minute ratings numbers but that's not quite good enough since that minute could contain the last 15 seconds of programming, one full commercial and the first 15 seconds of another ad. If PreTesting actually works it could perminently deflate the network upfront ad-buying balloon. It could deliver solid numbers for each individual ad as well as measure how effective it was at influencing behavior. That's a huge step toward applying the same sort of metrics to TV as have been put into place on the internet, where traffic and keyword patterns are analyzed daily for effectiveness. I hope it works.
Oh, and to the ad exec who says this will ruin the creativity of TV advertising, you're the problem. Advertising is about selling, not entertaining. If you want to entertain go to Hollywood. Here endeth the lesson.
1. Chris, you have some great writing skills, although the real problem is your 101 on TV Advertising. I beleive the real problem of the effectiveness of selling product through TV advertising is not that the metric is broken, but that the Ads (creativity) dosen't sell product! Not sure if you ever worked in TV or if you've ever worked in advertising, but you seem all to happy to say that TV networks aren't doing the job to sell a product. The bottom line is that a TV network needs to entertain, not sell a product, thats what the Ad agency and marketing exec's get to do. TV networks get the general public to watch and Ads get the general public to buy, change, brand or whatever the intent of the message.
Posted at 12:49AM on Jan 23rd 2006 by Mike