• by March 22, 2006

MEDIA MYOPIA -- Television, ironically, has never been especially good at the vision thing. As for its prefix, well, tele is Greek for, "at a distance." And that seems to be exactly what Madison Avenue is doing: distancing itself from television. Well, the word, anyway. MediaVest has dropped it. So has American Express. Instead, they are using terms like "video investment and activation" and "rolling video," respectively. We find that telling.

Maybe it's because TV got so dominant, so fast, that it didn't feel the need to look ahead. So TV became a reactive medium - some would say, reactionary. Broadcasters reacted to cable TV. Cable reacted to satellite TV. And traditional telecasters are beginning to react to non-traditional telecasting: time-shifting, place-shifting, downloading, streaming, peer-to-peer, and perhaps most powerful of all, personalization. How fast they react may ultimately determine the fate of the word. Television, that is. It's a word that so far has survived a multichannel explosion and a digital revolution. The one thing all sides of the TV industry can agree on - broadcasters, cablecasters, satellite operators, telephone companies, producers, advertisers and agencies - is that despite all the intra-industry bickering, people ultimately end up watching television.

And the good news is that they are watching more TV than ever before. The average household and viewer watched more hours of TV in 2005 than any year before, according to Nielsen. The problem is they also have far more to choose from than ever before: about 100 channels in the average home. The result: They're also watching a smaller percentage of the channels they receive than ever before. That's not a problem for consumers, of course. They're getting exactly what they want: choice, control, convenience, content. It's a problem for the industry, because fragmentation breeds inefficiencies in the traditional TV advertising model. The more fragmented the audience becomes, the more pressure there is on traditional CPM-based pricing models.

But the really big problem is that the fragmentation is actually much greater than what Nielsen reports. Putting aside the editing rules it uses to define "viewing," and the systems it uses for capturing it, Nielsen for the most part has only been measuring the in-home universe of traditional TV outlets. It has some plans to extend its universe beyond the household, and beyond traditional TV platforms, but it's unclear exactly how far it will go? Nielsen chief Susan Whiting has wisely adopted a strategy of "listening" to her customers, and "following the video." But we won't know for another couple of months how much it will actually follow. That's when Whiting & Co. will unveil their new "portfolio" strategy for measuring the new video marketplace. We hope it goes far enough.

Nielsen's decision to pass on a joint venture with Arbitron to use portable people meters to measure how, when, and most importantly where, people listen to radio or watch video programming, sends a mixed signal. While Nielsen says it may license the PPM as part of its portfolio strategy to augment its in-home measurements with an out-of-home component, we have a feeling it has something else up its sleeve - even as it pushes ahead with its PPM-based Project Apollo venture with Arbitron.

Arbitron, meanwhile, is pushing ahead with its "radio first" strategy for the PPM, though it says TV measurement is still an option.

Other players are also emerging, albeit initially as a radio-focused play. The Clear Channel-led initiative to develop a state-of-the-art electronic measurement system for radio could ultimately bear fruit for television. No one's saying that, of course. They're all acting like it's a radio deal, but once you can capture what people listen to when they're on-the-go, it seems reasonable to think you could also capture what they are viewing on-the-go. So watch closely what happens when The Media Audit begins testing its new "smart phone" metering system in Houston. The technology, licensed from Europe's Ipsos, can turn not just cell phones, but a whole new generation of portable listening - and viewing - devices into personal media metering systems. That includes, PDAs, Blackberries, Treos, iPods, PSPs, and the next generation of gizmomedia that might come along. It's a smart solution to a vexing problem. That is, if it works, of course. We'll soon find out. We'll also find out whether Clear Channel is earnest, or whether it is simply seeding competition to leverage a better deal out of Arbitron, the long-time radio ratings currency, which has already spent years developing and perfecting its PPM technology.

Such technologies may not have passed muster by Nielsen's in-home media measurement standards, but they are likely to transform media outside the home. And not just for radio, or portable TV, but for an increasing array of out-of-home media options that no longer fit the narrow definition of "outdoor: place-based, shopper media, retail media, experiential media, mobile media. The reality is that all media has grown increasingly portable. And not just outside the home, but inside too. The emergence of "media centers" being developed by Microsoft, TiVo, Apple and others, is making media portable within the home. In fact, such platforms will likely blur the distinctions between in- and out-of-home, as people are able to consume digital media content in snippets across a variety of stationary and portable platforms. ZenithOptimedia research guru Bruce Goerlich has even coined a name for this development. He calls it the "wild card scenario," and discussed it this morning at the Advertising Research Foundation's conference in New York.

It's a wild card, because up until now, Madison Avenue hasn't been thinking of media in quite so fluid terms - at least not in terms of how to measure it. Agencies have been evolving communications planning for years now and have a pretty good grasp of the real world in which people consume media. But even with new fangled communications audits, and engagement studies, they still essentially look at those media disparately when it comes to measuring their actual audiences. That's the wild card. If distinct media forms are losing their meaning to consumers, why does the industry cling to narrow definitions of media: TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, online, outdoor, in-home, mobile, etc.? Perhaps, it's because it's all we know. Or perhaps, because we're trying to preserve the status quo of business models that continue to work for us in the short run, but which ultimately will crush us when they come crashing down.

Don't get us wrong. It's not like we think everyone has his or her head in the sand. Agencies are beginning to talk the talk (ie. engagement planning) and some are beginning to walk the walk. MediaVest buying chief Donna Speciale doesn't know exactly what will happen now that she's put annexed the word "television" inside her shop, but she's hopeful that it will lead to some genuinely new thinking, new ideas, new deals, and new results. Better ones, maybe even, than her clients were getting with the old TV advertising model. That's an exciting step in the right direction, and we expect other agencies to follow suit soon. Hopefully, some media companies too.

Interestingly, the cable industry is taking a step in that same direction. Instead of erecting defensive barriers against the dissolution of linear television, the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau is embracing the shift toward nonlinear TV. In fact, the CAB's whole upfront pitch this year is based on it. In a series of one-one-one presentations CAB President Sean Cunningham and his team began making in recent months, nonlinear television has a starring role. Not surprisingly, cable is the star platform within that. Cable's digital set-tops, and their ability to serve video-on-demand, are cable's hub and spoke into the nonlinear world. That's a daring move for the CAB, give that most of its members advertising revenues are still derived from traditional TV programming and advertising. Ultimately, it's that programming that is cable's advantage in the shift toward nonlinear. Remember those 100 channels in the average home? Most of them are cable networks. Of course, most people receive them via a cable operator. But a lot of people get them via a satellite provider. Pretty soon, they'll be coming from telephone companies.

They'll also be coming over the Internet. Legally, we mean. Those deals haven't been struck yet, but we're seeing the baby steps of TV networks sampling their programs via the Web, or making them available for download via iTunes. The Internet will become the ultimate video server. It's already happening and companies as diverse as AOL, Brightcove and Broadband Enterprises, recognize that. Video on the Web is the new gold rush. It is to the current generation of video entrepreneurs what cable's original multichannel boom was in the 1980s. The only thing is we've gone from broadcasting to narrowcasting to nanocasting. Okay, we won't go there. At least not quite yet. Let's stick with the present and the very near future. Things are changing. To quote IBM guru Saul Berman, "It's the end of television as we know it."

But then again, as IAG Research mensch David Marans pointed out during the Association of National Advertisers' Television Advertising Forum today, "Eighty-eight percent of households don't have a DVR. Ninety-five percent have not downloaded a TV show. About the same percent do not have high definition TV. And more than 90 percent of all TV viewing is linear."

Sobering stats, David. But we wonder for how long?

HAS RECENCY BECOME DATED? -- That was the buzz Wednesday afternoon during the ANA's TV Ad Forum when GlaxoSmithKline Director of Advertising Media Services Kevin Holowicki quipped, "A couple of years ago everyone was talking about recency. I haven't heard that word once today." Recency, of course, is the media planning theory popularized by guru Erwin Ephron, which took the industry by storm during most of the 1990s, but which Holowicki implied may now be growing passé. Holowicki didn't elaborate why, but he implied it had something to do with the pace of change in media measurement, tracking and accountability systems, and the need to become "more actionable." The central discussion during Holowicki's panel was the role of engagement - an ill-defined measure that has been making the industry rounds in recent months, and especially this week.

"I think we're all searching for the secret sauce," said Holowicki, adding, "Let's not confuse cayenne pepper with the secret sauce." He implied that sauce should include a good measure of other things besides engagement, including "a lot more data on product usage" as well as "behavioral" data. "Ultimately, we have to go beyond just broad demographics," he said.

PUSHING THE WRONG BUTTON -- Asked why Project Apollo might succeed where some 16 or 17 previous attempts at developing a really good single-source measurement system had failed, Nielsen Senior Vice President-Client Insights Howard Shimmel offered clients an insight his Nielsen brass may have preferred he left in the dark. Speaking to a roomful of big advertisers at the ANA's TV Advertising Forum in New York, Shimmel said one of the main advantages Apollo has today over past efforts is a dramatic improvement in measurement technology. Specifically, he cited Apollo partner Arbitron's portable people meters. "The PPM makes it a lot easier to collect data," he said. What was wrong with that? Nothing. The problem is what Shimmel said the PPM was better than: people meters. Citing the failure of Arbitron's noble ScanAmerica initiative, Shimmel noted, "With ScanAmerica, I think they were using a push-button people meter." The quip, of course, follows Nielsen's decision to pass on an option to develop a PPM-based ratings venture with Arbitron, ostensibly because Nielsen deemed people meters to be a superior technology to the PPM.