EyeView's Blog

Why I Don't Trust Nielsen

I came across this self-serving blog post at Nielsen.com, thanks to those awesome guys at MarketingCharts.

The gist of the Nielsen post is this. People watch ads on TV. People also watch ads when they watch full-length TV episodes online. Using each of the four metrics deemed important by Nielsen, online TV ads performed slightly better than regular TV ads. The four metrics are:

• General Recall
• Brand Recall
• Message Recall
• Likeability

The conclusion following these results is so delicious that I just have to quote it in full:

“Data shows that web video viewers are more engaged and attentive to the programs they are watching, which is likely a function of the viewing environment and the oft-required active mouse-clicking to initiate nd [sic] continue content.”

It’s not that I don’t agree with their findings. It’s more that I have serious misgivings about how they got them and what they intend to do with them.

“Data shows…”? Really? Which data? I’d like to see those figures and how you got them. Given that Nielsen notoriously extrapolates national TV viewing figures from a relatively small number of homogenous households, I am curious to hear more about their online video engagement statistics.

I’m also in love with the phrase “oft-required active mouse clicking”. It’s like someone from the 1950s has come to watch how we do things in the future. But then everything about Nielsen’s comparison of offline and online ads is so far from current that it’s laughable.

Online advertising isn’t about “Message Recall”. “Likeability” is not an end in itself and should not be measured as such. The majority of online advertising is about actions, not impressions and Nielsen, I’m afraid, has absolutely no way of measuring that.

If you really want to compare TV ads and online ads, you need to measure how many people made a purchase after seeing an ad – a metric that TV networks have been rightly coy about exploring as the results could undermine their entire business model; or at least undermine the high prices they charge, relative to online advertisers.

But we should give Nielsen some credit. They bravely point out that online ads are more effective that TV ads, even if the methodology behind this realization is a little dodgy. The recommendation must therefore be to lower spend on TV advertising and shift budget to online inventory, right? Wrong.

“…the data suggests the benefits of utilizing both platforms in tandem to achieve advertising objectives.”

Way to sit on the fence, Nielsen. It’s almost as if a large part of your revenue comes from TV networks trying to prove to advertisers that they should still be the primary supplier of ad space. Oh, wait, it does.

Check out this report which shows a minority interest sports channel paying $7.5 million dollars a year to Nielsen for the privilege of having its tiny viewing figures calculated, so that it can claim it has viewing figures, so that it can charge more money to advertisers for those figures. I shudder to think how much CNN or NBC must be paying.

If you’re a big advertiser debating where to focus your media buying for the next few seasons, you might want to find a better informed and more impartial source of information than Nielsen.

comScore's Digital Year In Review

I know this report came out a week or so ago, but it's essential reading for anyone with more than a passing interest in the interwebs.

There is so much analysis produced these days that you need a report detailing the best reports to read. With all this noise, comScore continue to produce clear and informative statistics that always seem to answer the question someone in your office just asked you.

Some of the highlights from this report are the first-ever decline in annual growth rates for ecommerce as well as the unstoppable expansion of online video.

The report also captures the birth of Bing and the rise and rise of Facebook as it became the thrid largest display ad publisher in the US after Yahoo! and Fox Interactive Media (which includes MySpace).

You can download the entire report here, but you will have to give comScore some details first. It's well worth filling in the form to get to the report.

Enjoy.

The iPad and the Future of Print Media

The announcement this week of the iPad brings with it some mouthwatering possibilities for the further advancement of online video and video advertising in traditional print media.

The iPad is more portable than even the simplest notepad computer. It's a leisure device first and foremost, not a work tool. I think we will finally see streaming video move out of the home office and into the leisure experience. Browsing on the couch or in bed means that users coming across video will relate to it in a different way.

The iPad might introduce video advertising into leisure time as early adopters flick through apps while sipping on their coffee and eating breakfast. It just looks like a more accessible tool than a formal laptop.

Part of the iPad’s strategy is to take on Amazon’s Kindle and other ereaders. With a comprehensive range of books and periodicals for sale from iTunes, there is a perfect opportunity to subsidize the cost to the reader of a magazine or newspaper subscription with the insertion of targeted video ads or at the very least video sidebars with extra information about a story and links to other upselling opportunities.

It’s not that these possibilities don’t already exist, it’s that the iPad is the first device in a long time with a good shot at changing the way we consume print media.

I’ve never been an Apple evangelist, but the thought of having all my magazine and newspaper subscriptions waiting for me in easy to browse apps makes this a very tempting proposition.

Am I overstating the fact? I’d love to hear what you think.

IAB Digital Video Guidelines - Impressions vs Performance

Here’s a little gem that I missed at the end of last year. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has updated its guidelines regarding online video.

The IAB comprises more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. According to their site, “the IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising.”

The IAB is concerned with standardizing the measurement of ad impressions so that publishers and advertisers are always talking the same language. Faced with the rapid growth of video ads, the IAB was compelled to update its “Video Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines” from 2006 with a new addendum dealing with Auto-play.

The IAB defines “Auto-play” as follows: A video ad or a video ad linked with video content that initiates ‘‘play’’ without user interaction or without a user actively starting the video (essentially automatically starting without a ‘‘play’’ button being clicked by the user).

The new IAB guidelines require approved web publishers to disclose the fact that they using videos with auto-play to prevent unscrupulous advertisers running such ads well below the fold and recording “impressions” that may never be seen by visitors.

In a world where there is still much confusion over online advertising, this attempt to introduce standards into the wild, wild web is welcome, or at least it would be if it weren’t for two fundamental flaws in its logic.

The first comes from the IAB’s continued definition. There is no requirement to disclose the use of autoplay “if the user has a reasonable expectation that they are entering a video environment.” Even today any user should have a reasonable expectation that the commercial site they are visiting is a “video environment”. In the next 12 months this will become even more apparent as video achieves online ubiquity.

The second problem is even more basic. Using impressions to value video ads will not remain the standard for much longer. Apart from a handful of big-name, brand advertisers, companies will soon expect their video campaigns to provide ROI based on performance and how successfully they drive users through the sales funnel. As online advertising swings towards performance advertising, the effectiveness of video will be judged by increased conversion, not by impressions. There will no need for a standard definition of an impression once everybody has abandoned the world of impressions for performance.

The motivation for disclosure is becoming obsolete. Performance advertisers demand measurement by performance, not impressions.