• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 10, 2012

The biggest brands on television – based on Nielsen’s gross rating points – are television brands themselves. That’s what a stat cited by Nielsen Chief Revenue Officer Howard Shimmel during this afternoon’s Outfront conference just seemed to suggest.

Before joining this afternoon’s “Network Marketing Now” panel, Shimmel asked his colleagues at Nielsen to calculate the amount weight of on-air promo time aired by cable networks in the past year, and they figured out it is “500,000 GRPs.”

Aside from being a really big number, Shimmel pointed out that it also represents an awful lot of clutter and competition for the attention of potential viewers, and said it has to be looked at in connection with all the other media networks use – paid (ie. advertising) and earned (ie. social media).

He said the network marketing execs really need to think of their role as “integrated media strategy.”