• by Wayne Friedman , February 11, 2010

Marketers requesting more specific TV commercial ratings may have their wish granted. According to a joint release from the Association of National Advertisers' Television Advertising Committee and The Nielsen Company: "There is now a potential path for providing individual commercial ratings."

The move was revealed thanks to a successful analysis coming from the first two phases of an In-Home Commercial Ratings Test.

For the last several years -- since the introduction of C3 ratings in 2007 (commercial ratings plus three days of DVR playback) -- Nielsen has only been able to report an average of all commercial minutes viewed live or in playback during a particular television program.

According to the release, there have been "high accuracy rates in the test," which means it is technically possible to measure commercial viewing in the home. But Nielsen and the ANA say additional testing is required to refine the technology to further improve accuracy.

In addition, Nielsen and the ANA say: "There is an opportunity to improve the process and timing of C3 ratings and explore the potential for local commercial ratings."

"These tests are leaps in the right direction for our industry and validate all of our work in the area of brand-specific commercial ratings," stated Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the ANA.

Susan Whiting, vice chair of The Nielsen Company, said: "This test has shown that we can develop the technical ability to produce ratings for specific commercials, and we look forward to our ongoing work with the ANA in applying these results to the next phase of our test."

The next step is to launch another phase of the In-Home Commercial Ratings Pilot Test. This would test a new audio-detection technology, to improve accuracy of providing brand-specific commercial ratings.

Nielsen and the ANA say advertiser and agency participation are necessary to ensure that Ad-ID is used as the commercial identifier, and that all new commercials are audio-encoded.