Nielsen will huddle with clients this morning to discuss a controversial plan to begin mathematically adjusting its TV ratings estimates this fall based on several new factors, including the number of households in its sample that have computers with broadband Internet access. The adjustments, known in the parlance of the TV ratings business as "weighting controls," are designed to make Nielsen's audience estimates more representative of the actual TV universe by giving greater mathematical weight to viewers who are underrepresented in its sample, or giving less weight to those who are overrepresented. Based on estimates Nielsen began providing clients over the past week, its national TV ratings sample currently over-represents households that have computers with Internet access, and under-represents those that have no computers, and some clients are concerned that the changes will be made before their impact on the TV industry can be fully understood. While Nielsen has been reviewing and altering its weighting controls annually for years, it normally gives its clients plenty of time - at least a full year - to evaluate the changes before it makes them. The discussion surrounding this year's changes are based on only a few weeks of data, and some clients fear Nielsen is giving them the bum's rush, because the changes impact other parts of its business plans, especially its decision to begin reporting online viewing of TV programming in its ratings this fall. For their part, Nielsen executives say they have made no decision to implement the changes, and will only make the adjustments if their clients approve them. They also say the actual impact on TV ratings for specific television networks will likely be negligible, and that the biggest reason for implementing the controls now is to give Nielsen the ability to recalibrate its ratings when there is a big shift in the number of households that have new computers with Internet access. Pat McDonough, the Nielsen executive overseeing the process, says that usually occurs during the Christmas holidays, and Nielsen spends a few weeks adjusting its ratings based on a variety of new consumer electronics equipment, including computers and broadband access. McDonough said the timing surrounding the new weighting controls is unlike any Nielsen has implemented in the past, because it only just compiled universe estimates for households with computers connected to the Internet, and it will begin reporting TV viewing via the Internet this fall. According to the data Nielsen has begun circulating with its clients, 69.7% of U.S. households now have a computer with broadband Internet access. Based on its current sample, Nielsen's panel over-represents those households by 1.7%, and under-represents households with no computers by 0.8%. "The changes in ratings are really, really small," McDonough said of the impact those weighting controls would have on the ratings TV networks use to sell billions of advertising to agencies and advertisers. She estimated that the rating adjustments created by those weights would ultimately compute to "thousandths" of a ratings point, or numbers so small that they wouldn't event impact the statistical rounding that goes into the numbers Nielsen reports. That is small comfort for some Nielsen clients who are concerned that the ultimate, long-term impact of the weighting controls could be more significant, especially for networks that skew especially high or low with viewers living in households with or without Internet access. They also note that those estimates are based on only a week or two of data, vs. 52-weeks of data Nielsen normally gives its clients before making such changes. "Even fractional declines in ratings can become costly over time," one Nielsen client notes. "Networks whose audiences are older are more likely to experience negative changes. Conversely, the younger the age profile of network the more likely the change is to be neutral or positive. In the final analysis, a measurement company does not weight unless its wants to see audience data change in some way because its sample is out of alignment." Another concern among clients is that Nielsen's new estimates for Internet-connected households may not be accurate, and that it is not being benchmarked off of some reputable, objective, third-party source such as the U.S. Census. "It is unclear how Nielsen collects some the information that goes into developing its sample universe estimates," said the Nielsen client, adding, "Full disclosure is essential."
Kraft Foods/Nabisco Wheat Thins will take social media marketing integration to a new level this week, when it debuts the first of at least two 30-second national TV commercials featuring consumers who have tweeted positively about the brand. The TV spots employ two of three videos already posted on Wheat Thins' "The Crunch is Calling" YouTube channel and in a tab on its Facebook page, which have collectively drawn more than 623,000 views since being posted just over three weeks ago. The videos show a team of brand representatives, in a van prominently displaying Wheat Thins' "The Crunch Is Calling" theme, tracking down and surprising tweeters who have indicated their attachment to the crackers. Each tweeter is presented with a Wheat Thins gift that ties into the content of his/her tweet. Each video starts with a close-up of a screenshot showing an actual brand-related tweet (the tweeter's "handle" is visible), with the mobile team discussing the tweet's content as they arrive to have a close encounter with a fan. The first video to be aired as a TV spot (for two weeks, starting July 26) shows a tweet from Tabitha, a young woman who had lamented: "AAAHHHH ... I'm outta Wheat Thins ... Mi [sic] life is officially over!" As she opens her front door to the Crunch team and verifies that she indeed tweeted that message, an entire pallet of Wheat Thins boxes is being deposited in her driveway -- the brand's gift to ensure that she has plenty on hand for the foreseeable future. As the team zooms away, the stunned but smiling fan gives them the thumbs-up as she stands beside the pallet, with a dumbfounded neighbor looking on. The second video/TV ad captures the team presenting a set of custom-made "Crunch is Calling" headphones to Timmy (on a restaurant deck among friends/onlookers), who had tweeted: "Does anyone else have to turn up the volume when they eat Wheat Thins? Someone needs to invent crunch-proof headphones." After testing the headphones (a brand rep crunches a Wheat Thin, amplifying it through a megaphone), Timmy is left eating a cracker as he wonders aloud: "Don't I have to sign anything?" This ad will begin airing Aug. 30. A third video -- which may or may not be used for a TV ad -- shows the team surprising Dan, who had tweeted that he was using a Wheat Thin to pick his air guitar, with a Wheat Thins-branded guitar case containing ... nothing. Dan demos his cracker-pick air-guitar moves, and also receives a custom Wheat Thins box bearing his photo and tweet. The brand is being mysterious in responding to social media queries from fans wondering how Wheat Thins located the folks shown in the videos ("The videos are the real deal, but, unfortunately, we can't reveal our intervention secrets!"), but a spokesperson confirms that the subjects were tracked down with the help of their Facebook friends and family members. Interestingly, to enhance the surprise factor, Wheat Thins chose to video consumers who were selected based on "random" tweets picked up about the brand, rather than approaching Wheat Thins Twitter followers/Facebook fans. The TV spots will be aired on a variety of network prime-time shows and cable outlets with high viewership among the recently repositioned brand's new core target audience, women and men age 25 to 45, reports Jim Low, director of wheat snack crackers for Kraft Foods. The videos will also be employed in new online advertising, as pre-rolls for Web-posted episodes of targeted TV shows. Adjacent ad blocks will encourage viewers to click into the brand's Facebook page/Twitter presence. The social media-driven videos and their use as TV spots and pre-rolls represent a natural next step in the evolution of the brand and its marketing, Low tells Marketing Daily. The brand's repositioning process began over a year ago, when Wheat Thins used consumer research to identify the cracker's crunch, flavor and texture as its key attractions to a younger and more gender-balanced demographic group. Last summer, the brand introduced product changes to further enhance its appeal to this group (adding more whole-grain content to many varieties and eliminating high-fructose corn syrup); unveiled a more contemporary package design; and launched its "Crunch is Calling" tagline and an integrated campaign that included crunch-focused TV spots featuring young adults. Low reports that efforts in this year's first half focused on in-person engagement with the target audience through event sponsorships -- including high-visibility sponsorships during March's NCAA tournament and June's Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival (where Conan O'Brien serendipitously mentioned the brand from stage). The TV campaign and events helped drive engagement with Wheat Thins' new, app-heavy Facebook fan page (which has drawn nearly 111,000 fans since its launch in December '09), as well as its new Twitter. com/crunchiscalling presence (about 900 followers to date) and its revamped wheatthins.com site. The tweeter videos/TV spots/pre-rolls are designed to build on that engagement. "The social media conversations about Wheat Thins and viral effect are really underway now, and the enthusiasm for the brand is very clear," says Low, noting that celebrities (including "American Idol"'s Kris Allen and R&B singer Chris Brown) have tweeted about the brand. "These conversations continue to become increasingly important, and we're actively engaged in them on an ongoing basis" -- taking care to engage as a meaningful participant, rather than come off as promotional or intrusive, Low adds. To date, all signs point to substantial success in engaging the new target audience via social media and the other "Crunch" marketing efforts, according to Low. Importantly, these younger fans view Wheat Thins as a snack product to be enjoyed on an everyday basis, in contrast to the brand's traditional consumer base of women 45 and older, who viewed it "just as a traditional cracker," he points out. Escape Pod developed the new videos, and AKQA implemented social media/online elements. Edelman handles the brand's public relations.
Even as the NFL becomes more popular, its pre-season games seem to become less compelling each summer. But those readying for fantasy drafts still have an interest. In order to tap into that tech-savvy, zealous segment, the league will make all its pre-season games available on the Web starting in about 10 days. For $39.99, a subscriber can access all 65 games live on NFL.com. Viewers can choose from multiple feeds, including the broadcast by both the home and away teams. There will also be a chance to view multiple games simultaneously through a mosaic offering, and via picture-in-picture. Separately, the NFL Network will air all 65 games, but only 10 live. NFL Network live games start Aug. 13 with a Washington-Buffalo match-up. The NFL has floated the prospect of decreasing the number of pre-season games per team from four to two, since they offer risk of player injury and may no longer be needed as much as in the days before there was so much emphasis on year-round preparation.
Blog ad network BuzzLogic Tuesday announced an $8.8 million venture funding round and the rollout of a new custom ad unit geared to driving social media engagement around a brand or promotion. Leading BuzzLogic's second-round financing is Adams Capital Management with Ackerley Partners, another prior investor, also participating. The latest round brings the total raised by BuzzLogic to more than $20 million. The new capital will be used to expand the San Francisco-based company's sales force and invest in new product development under newly hired Chief Technology Officer John Donahue. Donahue, who joined BuzzLogic this month, was previously global director of clients solutions at Omnicom Media Group. The new BuzzRoll display ad format introduced today is aimed at encouraging blog readers to interact with and share everything from company blog content and Twitter feeds to video and Facebook applications. "It's a rich media solution designed to be very engaging, interactive and viral," said Peter O'Sullivan, vice president of sales at BuzzLogic, which had a potential reach of 76.3 million unique users in June, according to comScore. Most of the ads in BuzzLogic's network run across 20,000 blogs, and are selected based on their editorial quality and influence as well as being brand-safe. The company also connects advertisers with bloggers through third-party networks such as Edify, Google Ad Sense and Bloats. While O'Sullivan acknowledges that other ad companies have previously launched their own social media-centric ad units, he argues that BuzzLogic's targeting technology is what sets the BuzzRoll apart from competitors' offerings. "It really understands where to place that unit within the conversation that makes this different from what's out there," he said. As an example, he mentioned a consumer packaged goods brand running an ad targeted at moms that features interactive recipes that will appear around conversations where people might be discussing planning a dinner party or favorite recipes. BuzzLogic says the new BuzzRoll format has already shown results, with advertisers such as cable channel CMT seeing video engagement with rates two to three times higher than industry averages (benchmarked against DoubleClick rich media ads) in beta testing. CMT used the video-focused ad to help promote a new TV series. Advertisers can track performance of BuzzRoll campaigns across the network via its analytics dashboard to learn which sites generate the highest interaction rates and track sharing activity on platforms including Facebook, Twitter and email. O'Sullivan said advertisers in CPG, entertainment and technology have shown particular interest in the new unit so far.
Long-form video (anything longer than 30 seconds) can be distributed using a variety of mechanisms. As most industry folks are aware, generating incremental audience for these videos has largely revolved around structuring revenue share arrangements with third-party publishers. Under this arrangement, third-party sites sell the advertising avails and split the revenue with the producer.This type of syndication model works fine for content that is evergreen, but there is simply no way to guarantee that a specific number of targeted viewers will watch the content during a specific time frame. As a result, this type of syndication does not work well for viral videos, branded entertainment, and any other video assets that are campaign-driven. Paid syndication has emerged over the past couple of years as a way of solving this problem by enabling audience guarantees through a media buy. Studios, brands, and their agencies are beginning to invest more heavily in paid syndication and the models employed to execute these campaigns have begun to evolve in response. To date, the primary distributors of these types of video campaigns have been video ad networks. Networks provide the audience scale, the targeting, and ability to deliver a set number of views within a time window. Unfortunately, most of these networks only know how to deliver impressions and not video engagements. In an effort to deliver a higher quality experience to brands, studios, and consumers, new networks that focus specifically on syndicating long-form video are emerging. To understand how these new networks differ from traditional video ad networks it's helpful to look at their place in the evolution of the paid syndication model: In-Banner Autoplay: In-banner autoplay has been the default option for long-form video syndication for the past couple of years. The advantage to this type of distribution is that video views can be served one-to-one with page impressions and priced on a CPM basis. This has enabled ad networks to leverage their existing display inventory to deliver tens or even hundreds of millions of views over the course of a campaign at prices that sometimes drop below a penny per view. The problem with this approach is that a large number of impressions does not necessarily equate to a large number of engaged viewers (and often equates to a large number of irritated viewers). Contextual In-Banner Autoplay: A few networks have begun to improve on the in-banner model by contextually targeting the video to the text in the page and providing consumption guarantees (such as minimum completion rates). Sometimes the video player is even delivered outside the ad gutter and positioned in-page (although still in a 300 x 250 size). The result is higher completion rates and improved engagements with the video. But again, the problem with this approach is that while it may minimize the number of wasted impressions it does not provide for a guaranteed number of engagements. In-Banner Click2Play: More recently, a couple of networks have begun to offer guaranteed user-initiated views for in-banner media buys to solve the guaranteed engagement problem. These networks still deliver video in-banner like any other network, but they optimize against the CTR to guarantee a minimum number of users actually click to watch the video. Unlike autoplay in-banner units, in-banner Click2Play is priced on a per user-initiated-view basis or CPV. In-banner Click2Play represents a substantial leap forward in engagement, but it still results in the video being viewed as an advertisement rather than a piece of content. In-Page Click2Play: Today, a new model is emerging that also guarantees engagements, but instead positions the video in-page as content rather than in-banner as an advertisement. These units are priced under the same CPV structure, but the video players are larger and they are promoted editorially often with accompanying articles. This type of placement feels more organic to the user and helps better capture the value of the investment in video content production. This evolution has been in response to advertiser demand for increasing accountability towards the number of engaged viewers a network can deliver. Delivery of raw impressions for long-form video undervalues the content and treats the video like any other display advertisement. While the CPV pricing model is still foreign to some marketers, it is becoming a more familiar unit to more and more brands that focus on long-form video. As brand advertisers continue to gravitate towards delivery models that reward consumer attention and intent, we are sure to see continued evolution of the paid syndication model and survival of the fittest networks.
It's inevitable that we see some consolidation in the video content and technology sectors. The only question is, who will be doing the buying? That list is long and varied, and don't be surprised if ad rep firms and ad networks jump into the fray. Online magazines tend to generate 100% of their ad inventory on their "owned-and-operated" properties, thereby keeping 100% of the ad revenue they revenue. In that scenario, giving a cut to an ad network or ad-repping firm might make sense, but since most online content producers have a distributed model, they start off retaining a far lower percentage of their ad revenue. The numbers are conclusive: back in 2007, around 11% of the video bloggers/producers tracked by Mefeedia uploaded their content to YouTube. Fast-forward three years, and that number is up to 36%. The biggest losers from this trend were not other video hosters, but the producers' own Web sites. About 57% simply uploaded their clips onto their own sites in 2007. In 2010, that number has fallen to 18%. The upshot of a distributed model is getting far more reach across the Web. The downside is lower margins. The average producer splits anywhere from 25% to 50% with its distribution partner. It's hard to make the numbers add up if a network or rep firm is bringing you deals. This creates another challenge. Working with an ad network might make some sense if the publisher/producer didn't sell any campaigns directly. But the secret's out of the bag: selling directly to marketers and ad agencies, while time-consuming and expensive, is the best long-term plan to build an advertising business. When you go direct, you can price your ad inventory at premium and close many deals at higher CPMs than what most ad networks have to offer. There is simply no way an ad network will match high CPMs, let alone be able to tack on their margin. M&A might make more sense Now that being said, over time, ad networks and ad rep firms are going to continue to acquire content companies. For example, in the repping space, Gorilla Nation did that. The ownership of content and properties will over time drive far more goodwill and equity value. Ad networks are accustomed to "cashing and signing checks" as an intermediary, but over time they too will want to own content. Adconion bought both Kush TV (renaming it Red Lever) and put Joost out of its misery (though Joost never owned content, it licensed video, so the net effect is the same: Adconion owns content -- or has rights to it). While rep firms and ad networks will buy content sites and catalogs, they're driven by different agendas. -- The logic for rep firms is to hedge against the risk of losing publishers to competing rep firms, or see them simply build their own in-house sales teams. Then, there is the financial incentive of trading cash on one's balance sheet to consolidate and retain 100% of the revenues. -- For ad networks, the incentive to keep more revenues is there, too. But while historically ad networks pushed reach, advertisers will increasingly care about content. So the ability to create content will grow. But that is all secondary to what I perceive to be the main incentive for ad networks who have a lot of reach across the Web, having secured a lot of display banner inventory across the Web. Imagine if they could replace their low-yield display banner ads for video content (by running short video ads before video content). This is all a bit premature for your average ad rep or ad network to consider -- a bit like recommending that a domain parking operator remove some of those Google text links and actually add content to build a real business. Still, the logic is there. Whether or not this idea materializes remains to be seen.