• by Wayne Friedman , August 12, 2005

The young business of branded entertainment and product integration has given advertisers raw data when it comes to duration, occurrences, and when and where products are used or mentioned--but not much to determine the communications value of those deals.

Now Nielsen Media Research, along with Nielsen Entertainment--the research division for many non-TV businesses--wants to open up product placement and integration research in order to examine its broader context, as well as analyze the factors of product placement effectiveness. To some extent, the Nielsen project appears to be a move against iTVX, a product placement measurement firm that has built a rich database around the qualitative aspects of product integration.

"We have physical data when it comes to product placement," acknowledges Jerome Samson, director of technology and business strategy for VNU, the parent company of Nielsen. "We want go beyond and study the context."

To do that, Nielsen has enlisted help from TV networks, media agencies, and advertisers: CBS and UPN Television networks, Discovery Networks, Magna Global USA, Mediacom, OMD USA, PHD, Sprint, The Weather Channel, and Zenith Optimedia.

VNU's Samson says all parties will contribute their perspectives in examining product integration. Some of this might include such factors as viewer loyalty to a specific show. For instance, a study may determine--among recent viewers of a show, for example--how many of five recent episodes of a specific show a viewer has seen.

"We can look at this as an index. All this is quantifiable," said Samson--which is exactly what advertising and media agencies want--data that can be put into a media plan.

Samson says the study might also examine the relationship between the value of the brand and the audience as it relates to product placement and branded entertainment deals.

"If you believe everything the networks are saying, there is only going to be more and more product placement," said Brad Adgate, senior vice president and corporate research director of Horizon Media, New York. "Nielsen has been doing studies like this unilaterally. Now, it is looking to collaborate to come up with the best practice to handle this."

Right now, Samson says the study is a stand-alone project. It will start in about a month, and Samson says that by the end of the year it will release some results.