• by March 20, 2006

Dutch media and marketing information company VNU, which owns Nielsen Media Research and Nielsen Entertainment among other properties, has created a new research tool that claims to show the impact of movie advertising on ticket sales.

Dubbed Motion Media, the product links data from several VNU properties, including Nielsen Entertainment (which tracks box office receipts) and Nielsen Media Research (which tabulates television audience ratings). Other VNU businesses providing data include Nielsen Monitor-Plus, VNU Advisory Services, and IMS.

The company said Motion Media "will enable advertisers to optimize the box office potential of their ad schedules by identifying the network platforms that are most effective at driving box office sales."

The product was endorsed by Ira Sussman, vice president, Research for the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, who said the new research would demonstrate the value of television as an advertising medium for driving box office sales while providing the studios with the ability to maximize the impact of their ad schedules. "This research can help media organizations illustrate how expanding or shifting target demographic investments can help motion picture advertisers achieve gains in performance," he said.

Bruce Dennler, president and chief operating officer at Palisades Media Group, called the product "new and unique" and said his company planned to subscribe to the service.

"The insight of knowing which ads actually impacted consumer box office decisions is a very intriguing concept," he said.

Dennler said he planned to attend a presentation as early as next week to learn details of exactly how the research would be conducted, but he said he the company indicated in an initial meeting that it would be a correlation analysis of different data.

"It's a first step on Nielsen's part to take disparate databases and put information together," Dennler said. "They're doing it because the studios spend so much money on television advertising and Nielsen has so much television data. It's kind of like picking low-hanging fruit. They've been toying with the idea for awhile."

VNU said the basis for the study would be a comprehensive analysis of movie advertising over a six-year period, from 2000-2005. The data covers 953 motion pictures, more than $11 billion in advertising spending, and more than $49 billion in box office revenue.

The overall goal is to help studios determine a return on investment of national television advertising, and to assess the effectiveness of individual broadcast networks, cable networks, and syndication in delivering audiences, VNU said.