Agencies Developing Method To Factor Set-Top Data, See It As Proxy For TV Ratings

by Joe Mandese, Apr 26, 2010, 9:00 AM

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The promise of measuring, planning and buying television based on actual tuning data generated by digital TV set-top devices has beguiled the ad industry for years. Now a group of Madison Avenue pragmatists wants to see if it can develop a simple method that would allow advertisers and agencies to use the data to plan, buy and measure the delivery of TV networks, especially smaller ones that are not part of Nielsen's official TV ratings currency. The group, a digital set-top data task force organized by MPG's Collaborative Alliance initiative, has quietly begun working on the method, which would develop simple correlations between Nielsen's ratings and set-top data that could be used by media buyers to factor the audiences of unrated networks.

The findings, and the team's recommendations, will be presented during the alliances next meeting June 3rd in New York, but the collaborators are optimistic that it will yield a practical tool that could get more advertisers and agencies to begin rolling up their sleeves and applying set-top data to fill in some of the blanks that exist for their TV planning and buying decisions.

"The whole thing is trying to figure out the long tail of cable networks out there, and how we can measure them," says Andy Donchin, the top TV buyer at Aegis Group's Carat unit, and one of the agencies participating in MPG's alliance.

According to Donchin, there are scores of smaller TV networks that still are not rated by Nielsen, but which may have valuable audiences for advertisers to target and reach. But the lack of ratings data makes it difficult for agencies like Carat to justify spending their client's advertising dollars without some proof of performance.

The solution, he says, maybe the new factoring system, which would help make such buys "more accountable."

Mitch Oscar, the executive vice president of televisual applications at MPG, who organizes the Collaborative Alliance meetings, says several other agencies are close to throwing support behind the initiative, which has been working with a variety of digital set-top box data aggregators to develop the solution. Both AT&T U-verse and Rentrak are supplying digital set-top data, and researchers from at least three agencies - Carat, MPG and OMD - are actively involved in the development of the new system, and say they will apply it if the results look good enough to use in their buying decisions.

"We are in the process of developing the correlations," says MPG's Oscar. "Once formed we will present to buyers at the agencies to get their feedback and ascertain their comfort level with our directional approach."

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0 comments on "Agencies Developing Method To Factor Set-Top Data, See It As Proxy For TV Ratings".

1. Andrew Crowley from ggiyt
   

   commented on: April 26, 2010 at 9:46 a.m.

   I'm guessing Nielsen will be closing thier doors in 2 years

2. Chris Werner from LUC Media
   

   commented on: April 26, 2010 at 3:12 p.m.

   I'm guessing that all Nielsen has to do is lower MRS threshold and set top becomes unnecessary.

3. John Grono from GAP Research
   

   commented on: April 26, 2010 at 5:43 p.m.

   Well done to the Collaborative Alliance. We're watching your developments closely down here in Australia. Stay tuned for results of a similar project down-under in the second half of 2010.

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