Month: December 2021

When was the last time you saw a 60-second ad on TV? I bet it’s been a while. While the media industry has debated the most effective ad length for decades, we know the answer—at least generally speaking—isn’t a full minute. Today, 15 seconds is most common for TV*; comparably, ads on the internet can be as short as a single second. For brand advertisers, that means that regardless of platform, every second matters.

Today, as the media industry embraces digital and consumers adopt streaming-first mentalities, brands need platform-agnostic measurement. Audiences across traditional and digital media are converging, and the industry’s move to impressions-based buying and selling is already underway. 

Linear TV measurement has always been continuous, but it has struggled to provide brands with the level of granularity needed to compare ad performance with digital platforms and models. On the digital side, measurement has historically focused on individual campaign performance, hindering comparability with traditional TV ad performance. Today, comparability across platforms should be table stakes for measurement providers.

There are likely few in the industry who would lobby against the premise of comparability, and many might say the industry is late to address the issue in light of shifting media consumption trends. Premise, however, is much different from reality, and measurement technologies and methodologies have a long history of being channel- and platform-specific. Transformative change requires precision, attention to market needs and a focus on the future.

It’s easy to say that providers are late in adjusting, consolidating and marrying their measurement capabilities. When change is needed, few would say they can wait to allow ample time to develop, test and implement. Outside of a pandemic, perhaps the need might not have been as magnified. Today, however, 32% of total time spent with TV involves content from connected devices. 

When we look at primary TV programming options (broadcast, cable, streaming), streaming now accounts for more than one-quarter of total viewership. In October, time spent with streaming was equal to time spent watching broadcast television, as reported in The Gauge, Nielsen’s total TV and streaming viewing snapshot. Given the blurring lines between traditional and digital, measurement capabilities can no longer be focused on specific platforms or channels. Not only do measurement methodologies need to be consistent to address shifting media consumption behavior, the metrics they produce need to be analogous to provide brands with true comparability.

That brings us to the importance of measuring beyond that 60-second threshold. That’s the key to comparability when an ad runs on television. Measurement at the minute level has been the standard for decades, and it generally provides networks with enough granularity to determine overall audience engagement. That’s not the case for advertisers and agencies, given that ads grace the same screens, but for much less time.

In today’s media mix, there is no shortage of options and variety for consumers to choose from. And regardless of platform, any minute a consumer spends with content is a minute of that person’s time. We also know that ad avoidance remains a key challenge—no matter how inspiring a message may be. Through that lens, media buyers and sellers have grown increasingly focused on their media mix and spend to ensure it’s efficient and effective. In today’s market, TV buyers and sellers need individual commercial metrics—complemented by insight into what actions a brand’s message inspires—to make those determinations.Subminute reporting, with individual commercial metrics, also cancels the premise of “winning the minute.”

Obviously, it takes more than words on a page to bring measurement into the 21st century. It’s a bigger remit than any single organization can take on and deliver. For our part, we’re introducing updated content watermark and signature technology to facilitate individual measurement of content and advertisements. And to expand our coverage, we’ve partnered with Extreme Reach, a global leader in creative logistics, to scale the watermarking in advertising to cover a vast majority of national linear ads on TV.

Importantly, measurement needs to be flexible and relevant to all parties. That’s why Nielsen will continue providing average commercial minute ratings as a transitional complement to the more granular measurement to allow the ecosystem to adapt to new metrics. And by streamlining our crediting systems and migrating them to the cloud, we’ll be able to deliver currency-grade measurement as we know it today and subminute reporting that is fundamental for Nielsen ONE.

This article originally appeared on Broadcasting + Cable.

*Source: Nielsen Ad Intel (Jan. 1-Nov. 29, 2021)

In an era of internet-connected ubiquity, media fragmentation has given consumers seemingly countless ways to satiate their hunger for content. Yet while many of the options we engage with on the TV glass attract big headlines in isolation, they don’t have the ability to showcase just how much internet connectivity has altered our TV usage over the past decade.

Connected ubiquity: What does that mean?

At a high level, it’s easy to credit the growth of streaming as the driver of internet-connected media consumption, given the big headlines around hit programs like Tiger King, Squid Game and Ted Lasso. But truth be told, TV-connected devices provide consumers with access to significantly more content than what’s available on the big subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) platforms.

In August 2021, more than 81% of U.S. homes had at least one TV-connected device, providing consumers access to anything the internet has to offer. That’s up from 72% back in August 2019, and connected device ownership includes everything from smart TVs, video game consoles, and over-the-top (OTT) devices like Amazon Fire TV Sticks and Roku devices. Additionally, a growing portion of TV homes rely on the internet for all of their TV engagement (free or paid), including traditional, scheduled programming. In fact, cord cutters (homes that do not subscribe to traditional cable/satellite services) now account for 41% of all U.S. TV households.

Adding it all up: The big impact of device connectivity

In light of the many ways that consumers engage with their TVs, it’s difficult to see just how much our content experience has changed as a result of internet connectivity. But when we take a step back and aggregate all of our TV usage, the shift to using TV-connected devices over the past 10 years is significant. In September 2011, the average consumer 2 and older only spent 25 minutes each day with TV-connected devices. Ten years later, the time spent has grown to one hour and 23 minutes. Among younger groups, specifically 2-11, 12-17 and 18-24, the shift has been significantly more extreme.

COVID-19 amplifies adoption and access 

Availability, access and new media options have all played a role in the increase in TV connected device usage in recent years. The arrival of COVID-19 in early 2020, however, boosted the speed of adoption when compared with the years leading up to the pandemic.

Between 2011 and 2019, the annual increase in TV connected device usage among people 2 and older was modest, remaining flat or inching up a few percentages. Between September 2020 and September 2021, however, the share of time spent jumped from 26% to 32%. At a more granular level, the pandemic stimulated a notable jump in usage among older generations, as time spent among people 50-64 jumped from 15% to 22% over the last year.

A new kind of fragmentation

For consumers, the breadth of today’s media options presents seemingly unlimited content options to keep even the pickiest tastes entertained. 

In the streaming space alone—across subscription and ad-supported models—consumers had more than 200 options at the midway point of this year, with more likely to come online in the coming year. The term fragmentation has been overused to describe the options in the media industry for years, yet transition to digital video increases the challenge for content creators, advertisers and agencies looking to best engage with consumers. While streaming accounted for 28% of total TV usage in October, for example, 9% of that share is attributed to providers outside the big five (Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Prime Video and Disney+).

For the industry at large, more choice for consumers translates into more to keep track of, largely because new platforms and channels rarely replace existing options outright. And in the case of internet connectivity, new options and channels all exist in their own silos. This is notably different from the impact of a new cable channel coming online or a broadcast channel going off the air.  Yet the easiest way to navigate increasing fragmentation is by using the proper data set to best understand where consumers are, what they’re engaging with and whether they’re coming back for more.