MediaPost: Agencies Reject Nielsen Claim They've Stalled 'Commercial' Ratings
Nielsen is having a bit of a tiff lately with ad agencies over its provision of television ratings. While the majority of ad execs want commercials rated, not the shows they air within, Nielsen claims they have already offered those ratings to agencies. Agencies have countered saying those ratings, 60-second unit measurements, do not adequately serve what's really needed, the measurement of actual commercial ratings, which may or may not fall neatly into Nielsen's 60 seconds.
Actual commercial ratings, if they see the light of day, could foster some radically different methods of television buying. If it's commercials that are measured and not the containing programs, all of the promotion that goes into hyping a television show to viewers - attempting to achieve high ratings - could now go towards hyping commercials. NBC, faced with lower ratings because of ad skipping, bathroom breaks, etc. might have to ensure a sufficiently high level of commercial viewership to maintain its ad rates.
In theory, NBC would have to offer incentives to viewers to watch commercials. These incentives could be monetary in nature or come in other forms. Aside from possible Nielsen ratings that would "count" commercial viewership, embedded within the commercials (or before or after a commercial break) would be some sort of code or proof mechanism for the viewer to redeem. This would be necessary, not to prove viewership (although it could serve as a form of comparison to Nielsen ratings), but simply to get viewers to watch.
This could dramatically alter the definition of a commercial. While consumers might be swayed financially to watch a commercial, after a time, if commercials remain as boring as they currently are, no amount of money will get consumers to watch when they can so easily skip commercials. Commercials will have to take on elements of what has proved one of the better forms of promotion, the movie/TV trailer. Trailers, whether for good programming or bad, always seem to create the sense that you absolutely positively have to watch the show being promoted.
There could be many additional means to make commercials a "must watch" activity. A series of commercials could take on the form of a soap opera or serial drama, where viewers would have to watch from day to day and week to week to either follow the story line or to receive other "incentives" for financial redemption. In this sense, commercials become a form of the programming.
