US TV ratings market leader Nielsen has introduced a new measure of TV programs, which can track minute by minute viewing, whether they are viewed broadcast in real time, or viewed from a recording on a Digital Video Recorder. The company said that it had been asked by customers to provide reliable figures of fast forwarding through commercials.
Nielsen will now offer this service to clients using the measure of an Average Commercial Minute file so that advertisers and programmers can see the total number of minutes viewed and will cover Live viewing; Live viewing plus DVR playback on the same day; Live viewing plus DVR playback for one, two, three and seven days.
At the recent US broadcast Upfront negotiations, broadcasters won something of a victory, getting advertisers to conceded that DVR viewed advertising should be worth something, so anything that it viewed Live and up to 3 day later is now accepted. Last year advertisers felt that all DVR viewings had advertising fast forwarded and wanted to discount the lot.
Nielsen’s NPOWER system can now show all the individual minutes that were viewed in a program, whether it the beginning or end of a program, or the advertisements, ranging from one minute delayed viewing on a DVR up to seven days.
‘Today’s launch of average commercial minute ratings culminates a year-long effort to deliver a new way of measuring television viewing,’ said Sara Erichson, Executive Vice President, Client Services for Nielsen Media Research. ‘Nielsen worked very closely with all client groups to develop this new measurement. Our clients will determine which of these data streams they want to use for negotiating the buying and selling of advertising and whether it be for the upcoming television season or the following one.’
About 17% of households in the US currently have DVRs, up from 11% last year and within these households, 58% of broadcast primetime viewing takes place live, leaving 42% in DVR playback. 95% of all broadcast prime time viewing within these homes (Live + Playback) takes place within three days of the live telecast. So if advertisers accept those viewers in their advertising count, that means they are only ignoring 5% of viewers that watch it later.
People tend to watch the top rated cable and syndicated viewing live, with only roughly 15% of this programming viewed on a DVR among DVR owning homes.
What’s happened here is that the knee jerk panic that set in around DVR viewing is beginning to settle. This will mean that US broadcasters which reached aggressively for internet advertising this time last year by moving their business models online in big numbers, will automatically get a boost in the Upfront, by the extended number of viewers the new measure will show, roughly in line with last year’s figures, despite the increase in DVR penetration over the course of the year.
Among households with DVRs this represents is a huge increase in adverts accepted as being delivered, with the calculated audience size 40% higher if you include same day DVR playback and 73% when including three days of playback. Of course this is only happening in the 17% of US homes which have DVRs, but by next year, when DVR penetration is more likely to be around 23% of US homes, this shift in the uneasy alliance between advertisers and broadcast TV channels will be significant in giving time for broadcasters to drive up their revenues from internet delivered programming to compensate for more viewers lost to fast forwarding.