• by Wayne Friedman , March 17, 2014

Pushing for TV advertisers to include paying for local time-shifted TV viewing, TV advertising trade group TVB now says a local TV metric with time-shifted TV viewing is nearly comparable to a national ratings metric. That includes three days of time-shifting -- a metric that TV advertisers agree to use in their deals.

Season-to-date local TV viewing data -- which includes same-day time-shifted data -- is just 1% below the comparable levels of national TV commercial ratings plus three days of time-shifted TV content (C3). The reporting period for the research is from October 2013 to January 2014.

Looking more specifically at certain demographics, for adult 25-54 viewers, local live TV-plus same-day time-shifted data are 9% below that of national C3 on a season-to-date basis.

Local TV sellers have been pushing TV buyers to include time-shifted TV impressions in their local TV buys. But TV advertisers and media agency buyers have resisted, preferring to continue to do business on a live-only TV basis. When looking at just local live TV viewing, the TVB analysis now says, on a season-to-date basis, it is 18% below that of C3 data -- the lowest levels since 2010.

TVB says for some time the local live-plus-same-day TV ratings were above that of C3. That made agencies concerned that the data might be overstating viewing. Now, for the first time, local live-plus-same-day viewing is below C3 viewing. 

Nielsen, which offers up the national C3 metric, does not have a similar rating metric for local TV ratings. Since 2007, national TV advertisers have been using C3 as the virtual industry standard when it comes to TV media deals.

Bill Fine, president/general manager of WCVB-TV and TVB chairman, stated: "The live-only [TV] data stream has not been relevant for years, in local TV's time-shifting and screen-shifting world. This latest data provides conclusive proof.”

He added: “For the cross-platform model to succeed for advertisers, agencies, research companies and broadcasters, every viewer has to be counted and valued.”

"Watching TV" photo from Shutterstock.