Comscore, SMI Strike Deal For Advanced eCPM Metric
- by Wayne Friedman , March 17, 2022
Media measurement company Comscore has struck a deal with ad intelligence and pricing data firm Standard Media Index to offer an advanced eCPM -- an “effective” cost-per-thousand viewer metric --- for linear TV advertising.
The new measure combines census-based pricing data from SMI with census-based viewing data from Comscore.This eCPM, says SMI, goes far beyond age and gender, offering effective rates for linear TV for more than 100 advanced audiences.
It can be used for cross-screen planning, audience-based targeting and can “benchmark linear TV rates on an apples-to-apples basis with digital, CTV and OTT,” Ben Tatta, president of SMI, said in a release.
More and more of the TV and streaming industry has been increasingly moving to more impression-based “currency” for media transactions.
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In June 2021, SMI started up an “effective” cost-per-thousand viewer (eCPM) cross-media comparison data platform -- “Pricing Intelligence Suite” -- showing a comparison of advertising CPMs for linear and digital media.
Based on its national advertiser invoice database -- mapped to TV audience ratings from October 2020 to March 2021 -- it showed the effective CPM in entertainment prime-time shows for Nielsen C3 data among the adults 18-49 demographic to be $77. This compares to a $55 eCPM for late-night and $20 for daytime.
Interesting opening. It is, perhaps conveniently (?), missing the definition and derivation of "impressions" and therfore lacks clarity on th use of "effective" which would be determined by the rigour of the impressions used.
Tony, I may be wrong on this but I believe that the "impressions" portion of this new service are based on the findings of a Comscore panel's set top box panel's set usage augmented by a statistical method for estimating who is vieweing. If that is true----and the viewer estimating process gives a fairly accurate indicator of the composition of the assumed commercial audience by sex, age, income, race, region, family size, etc, etc.---- this should produce about the same results that you would obtain using conventional Nielsen average commercial minute "viewing" metrics and their counterparts for other media. Of course we both know that many of the assumed viewers don't actually watch the commercials or look at display ads or listen to audio commercials---but that's another question. Perhaps comeone from SMI or Comscore will be willing to offer an explanation If I have erred in my assumptions. After all we just want the truth.
Adding to my reply, while I have little use for "impressions" the way they are usually calculated nor the totally unwarranted assumption that these stats represent actual advertising contacts---they don't---I consider the introduction of this kind of service to be a positive step. For decades, Netcosts- now owned by SQAD---which I created many years ago--- for national TV as well as SQAD and Media Market Guide for local TV and radio---provided general but useful average CPM benchmarks for media planners, time buyers and sellers to consider relative to their own performance. Extending such comparisone to digital media, and newer forms of "TV" provides added value--- so long as suitable adjustments are made by their users and it is appreciated that many buys---and sells---depart from the norm for a variety of perfectly understandable reasons.
So used as a directional guide the data can be helpful---but mainly in buying within a medium; not necessarily in deciding media mixes. That's why we include similar etimates for a wide range of media options in our just released report, "Cross Platform Dimensions 2022", which also outlines the kinds of adjustments that are needed for proper use of such information.