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Ford, Others Push for Brand-Specific Commercial Ratings

Advertisers such as Ford Motor Company believe that Nielsen’s commercial minutes ratings may not go far enough, and have decided that what they need is ratings for each single commercial, rather than an average of commercial viewing across an entire program.

Mark Kaline, global media manager for Ford and the incoming chairman of the Association of National Advertisers’ television committee, is quoted as saying in The New York Times, “The internet has raised the bar. There are so many dollars involved in television and print and in other traditional media that we’re looking for greater granularity to help with decisions.”

Nielsen, the television networks and advertising agencies have been locked in discussions for months on the best way to track commercial viewing. The result was Nielsen’s commercial ratings, which track how many people watch commercials on average across all the commercial breaks during a single program, rather than how many people watch any single commercial. Nielsen hopes to begin reporting the commercial ratings in May.

But the television advertising committee released a white paper yesterday, claiming that commercial ratings are not sufficient for many of the biggest TV advertisers. Kellogg Co. senior director of advertising and media services Andrew Jung will make the committee’s case during the ANA’s TV Advertising Forum in New York next week, according to MediaPost.

Still, while large advertisers want what they are calling “brand specific” commercial ratings, or ratings for individual ads, networks and ad agencies may be less inclined to push for them.

Agencies may find their work on individual ads more closely scrutinized by clients if there were ratings of each commercial, for example. Networks might have marketers beginning to ask for particular placement - that is, for an ad not to be aired after a particular advertiser spot that achieved low ratings. Currently, advertisers are not able to pay for exact position within shows.

But Kaline says that knowing how many viewers each commercial retains between programming could be helpful for the networks. Certain types of advertisers might work well together, and the networks could use that information to put together commercial blocks that would help keep more viewers tuned in.