New Metric Measures Ad Effectiveness, Distracting Influences

by Wayne Friedman , June 17, 2011

Are TV viewers tuning away from your commercial to another channel, or other activity? A new research tool looks to find out why and how to change that.

Millward Brown and Kantar Media say they have developed an "enhanced commercial measurement" that can analyze creative and media placement of commercials on a second-by-second basis. The companies can identify the impact of the message's creative and compare it to media placement.

The companies say they can measure creative and media influences that impact audience "tune-away" by product category and brand. Its survey looked at 184 commercials across a broad range of product categories for its analysis.

The creative variables include "lack of relevance," "negative emotional reaction" and "lack of message relevance/credibility." Media factors include channel, program, duration, the pod in a program, position in pod, daypart and product category.

The companies are hoping to develop a "score" for tune-away -- as well as trends around specific time-shifting, frequency of exposure, and viewer attributes.

Millward Brown and Kantar Media say better software is needed to measure commercial avoidance in an age of growing digital screens, as well as current time-shifting technologies.

advertising, media, media measurement, television, tv

2 comments about "New Metric Measures Ad Effectiveness, Distracting Influences".

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Stephen Pickens from Pick Consulting, June 17, 2011 at 10:56 a.m.
Google TV currently offers this capability, but it would be very valuable to apply to more broadly distributed platforms.
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Doug Garnett from Protonik, LLC, June 20, 2011 at 12:41 p.m.

Given the past history of measurements of this type, I suspect this will end up being just one more packaged thing for PR to help win business while delivering little client value.

Interestingly, when we buy TV based on measured responses, we don't need to search out this kind of arcane measurement. Of course, not every campaign can generate a response worth measuring. But far more can than agencies today are willing to execute.