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For the second time in as many days, Nielsen has asked its clients to forward information about the commercials they air.
Yesterday (Thursday), Nielsen asked that clients notify the research company when they air “certain non-traditional commercial formats” that might not be detected by its automated monitoring systems meant to track commercials and offer commercial ratings, writes MediaPost.
Those non-traditional formats include text crawls or tickertapes that appear on the screen during a TV commercial, such as those used by news and sports channels such as CNN, CNBC and ESPN. The text crawls can disrupt the automated commercial match process used by Nielsen’s Monitor-Plus service.
The request, coming at the behest of auditors working with the Media Rating Council, has made some clients anxious about the new commercial ratings. They wonder whether Nielsen’s methods are as sound as the company has implied. The ratings are expected to be officially rolled out at the end of this month for vetting, and are expected to be the currency for TV buys in the fall.
Earlier this week, cable clients were asked for their commercial log data.
A spokesman for Nielsen said that the company already knows who is using the particular formats, and that asking for notification in writing is simply a formality. “The reason it’s happening now is that the clients asked us to go to the MRC and get audited and the auditor asked us to formally request these things.”
At least one cable network, however, believes the issue is more serious. “There is a whole laundry list of issues, most of which they say, ‘We will take care of,’” Tim Brooks, senior vice president-research at Lifetime Television, is quoted as saying. He points out that the problem is that Monitor-Plus was not designed for processing ratings, and it is being retrofitted to handle the task. Doing so takes time, and Nielsen is rushing the implementation process, he says.
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