During the conference call today with the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) I exercised restraint rather than pressing the buttons on the phone to ask a question. My question would not have been a question but more of "Oh come ON. You HAVE to be kidding me!!"
Here is a group of content providers, advertising agencies and advertisers who are coming together with a hardly funded entity that will do requests for proposals which may or may not wind up getting funded. It sounds like so far between the fourteen current participants they managed to scrape together a million bucks ("seven figures" total between all 14 participants is all they would say).
So what will we get?
If I were a betting man I'd bet you get the following:
- nothing much, really, at least not in terms of the way the advertising is bought and sold
- a means to put additional pressure on Nielsen
- group therapy
There is value in those last two bullets. Putting pressure on Nielsen can only be good from the consortium's perspective. I'm sure there's also the fantasy of "everything Nielsen gives us, plus more, plus better, plus cheaper!"
As fantasies go, it's not exactly "It would be really cool to be Tom Brady for a day..." but it's at least understandable.
The broadcast networks get a place to vent their frustration and belief that as many people are watching their stuff as ever, it's just not being watched live, so they are not making as much. "Waaaaaaahhhhhhh! Waaaaaaaaaaahhh!" And the consortium will nod sympathetically in agreement. The cable networks will get to use it as sort of social networking to convince advertisers the premiums between broadcast and cable are too high. The advertisers will smile at all parties while thinking "yeah, right, like we're going to PAY you for DVR viewers who watch a week later. HAHAHAHA Good luck with that!"
The advertisers get a place to vent their frustration that they want ratings measurements on commercial spots, rather than average commercial ratings (this actually seems very reasonable to me, so I won't add a "waaaaaaaahhhh!") and the consortium will nod in agreement.
And the agencies will do anything and everything they can to make both the buyers and sellers of advertising as happy as possible. Because at the end of the day, that's just what they do.
But if you're not looking to replace Nielsen and you're not looking for a new currency to buy and sell advertising, why get the buyers and sellers of advertising together? If between these 14 companies they can barely scrape together a million bucks, how serious are they about accomplishing anything besides putting additional pressure on Nielsen and group therapy?
On the other hand, a million bucks or so to put pressure on Nielsen and get group therapy in the bargain? Quite honestly, that seems like a bargain at 10 times the price.
Update: Claire Atkinson has a good write up, and says that each of the 14 members ponied up $100,000 so the consortium is seeded with 1.4 million. Atkinson notes that it "pales in comparison to the $7.5 million over three years that Nielsen has already invested in the Council for Research Excellence, an independent cross industry body with a similar mission and membership to CIMM."
Hey Robert, when are the late night ratings going to come in?
Jon, my guess is we’re not going to see the late night people meter numbers for last night since they typically arrive at about the same time as the primetime overnight numbers do for us.
I was just wondering, because every Thursday at around 1:30 the weekly late night ratings come in and they haven’t come in today, is there a reason for that?
Bravo on the graphic choice!
Bill, I think Jon was referring to the normal weekly late night ratings release. I’m guessing they too, are 1 day delayed by Labor Day and will come out tomorrow, if not later today.
Since everyone with even the slightest bit of understanding of how things work knows that this is all just for show, pretty much, how much pressure can they really put on Nielsen anyway?
I think the better question is “how much does pressure matter, even if there is pressure?”
My guess is not much, but it likely makes the networks and the advertisers FEEL better. Just by having a regular forum to bitch about “the way things are” is pressure and Nielsen is already spinning their plans to ultimately include online video viewing in the TV ratings even if it won’t do it for a couple of years. Is this happening any sooner because of CIMM? I doubt it, but Nielsen is at least spinning it sooner than they probably otherwise would’ve.
I think it may be somewhat equivalent to a parent telling their child “I’m keeping my eyes on you!”, and likely have just about as much effect
Nielsen is already spinning their plans to ultimately include online video viewing in the TV ratings even if it won’t do it for a couple of years.
Which, of course, will be completely meaningless, just like out-of-home viewing and the whole college experiments, since the advertisers will ultimately refuse to pay.
It will be important to advertisers who advertise within shows. I wonder how much product placement advertisers pay to get their products featured (or at least visible) in shows.
I think some of you are underestimating the joy that the consortium participants get from sticking it to Nielsen. A reporter PAID by the Nielsen empire (and someone who should’ve known better) wrote a story headlined “Nielsen Challenged by new ratings system”
he subsequently corrected the headline and updated the story — but still got the link from Drudge report which has not been updated and still reads “Networks unveil new TV ratings system; Challenge Nielsen”
Of course there IS NO NEW RATINGS SYSTEM and the consortium was very quick to distance itself from challenging Nielsen. But there’s NO WAY they don’t LOVE stories like that, headlined like that, being out there.