• by Joe Mandese , April 24, 2008

In a move that could bring the kind of structure to the burgeoning out-of-home video advertising marketplace that is associated with traditional television, Nielsen plans to introduce TV ratings "pocketpieces" for a variety of place-based television networks. The plan, which was revealed by Senior Vice President-Nielsen Strategic Media Research Paul Lindstrom, came out as part of a panel discussion on Wednesday during MediaPost's Digital Out-of-Home Forum in New York.

Lindstrom said the first of the pocketpieces--one for health club video network IdeaCast--would be released in the next "two to three weeks," and that another for Gas Station TV would follow shortly after. By September, he said Nielsen would be publishing pocketpieces for as many as 10 place-based television networks.

Pocketpieces is a term used to describe printed TV ratings reports issued by Nielsen that are designed to fit in someone's vest pocket. Traditional TV networks and stations usually have them published weekly, but Lindstrom told MediaDailyNews that the place-based TV network reports would likely be published monthly due to the fact that their audience dynamics generally change less frequently than for traditional broadcast and cable TV outlets.

Most media planners, buyers and researchers now get their TV ratings data from Nielsen electronically, but the publication of pocketpieces is a symbolic development for the out-of-home video marketplace, implying that it now has comparable market currency data to television.

Unlike television and online--where Nielsen manages big consumer panels to measure those media's audience estimates--Lindstrom said the place-based media network reports would reply primarily on compiling and modeling third-party data, such as membership data from health clubs, or transaction data at retail outlets of gas station pumps. He said this would be coupled with primary Nielsen research conducted by telephone that would ascribe demographics and other important information to the gross audience estimates. The method is similar to what Nielsen has been utilizing for the cinema advertising industry for several years, and the advent of Nielsen pocketpieces has helped that medium grow its share of advertising budgets.

Market analysts estimate that cinema currently accounts for about half of all out-of-home video advertising--an industry that is projected to take in an estimated $1.7 billion in advertising this year, according to Magna Global Director of Industry Analysis Brian Wieser.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the new pocketpieces will be Nielsen's imprimatur, a stamp of approval that would provide legitimacy and authenticity for place-based networks calling on advertisers and agencies.

Another advantage, Lindstrom said, would be the ability to flow place-based TV audience estimates into media-planning software from firms such as Nielsen's IMS unit, or various media and marketing mix modeling systems.

Lindstrom called the plan a "fairly simple, fairly straightforward approach" that would enable place-based TV networks to be planned and bought alongside traditional TV outlets.

David Turman, director of out-of-home media at Publicis' Spark Communications unit, who was part of the panel, applauded the "simplicity" of Lindstrom's plan, but said the real test would be, "whether our clients accept it." He added that he thought they would.

Lindstrom acknowledged that the new audience data would not be perfect, but that it was a pragmatic solution for the rapidly growing out-of-home video marketplace, and that it would provide the kind of structure that would allow advertisers, agencies and sellers to conduct negotiations based on common estimates.

In another important disclosure, Suzanne Alecia, president of fledgling trade group Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB) revealed that OVAB last week gave the American Association of Advertising Agencies' media research committee a draft of proposed measurement guidelines.

"The guidelines have not been published yet," she said, adding that they contain three primary factors that would be used as the basis of estimating audiences for out-of-home video networks that carry both programming and advertising:

1 - A network's "gross venue traffic."
2 - A metric that would measure a network's "presence in the zone."
3 - And a third that would measure the ability of ads on a network to be "noticed."

The last factor, she said, "has to do with dwell time," and that combined with the other factors would provide an accurate basis for calculating an ad impression for out-of-home video networks.

"That is basically what we have proposed," she said, referring to the draft submitted to the AAAA committee.

The proposal may not have gone far enough, challenged Tony Jarvis, executive vice president-global research for out-of-home media giant Clear Channel Outdoor, and a key figure in the out-of-home media industry's development of a new "eyes-on" audience measurement standard that has become the pride of the industry. Unlike traditional media such as TV, radio, newspapers and magazines, which rely on criteria that measure a consumer's "opportunity to see" an ad, the traditional out-of-home media industry's standard raises the bar and makes it closer to what Jarvis said advertisers really want: advertising exposure. He suggested that by not pushing for the same standard, the OVAB proposal was effectively a step backwards for the out-of-home video sector.

OVAB's Alecia acknowledged that the new guidelines are not perfect, but said that they are a reasonable compromise for the young and still-developing medium, noting that it took traditional television outlets "50 years" to get to their current C3, or average commercial minute ratings standard, and it took the traditional outdoor media industry "100 years" to get to its eyes-on standard.

The compromise, suggested Sequent Partners' Jim Spaeth, moderator of the panel, was a reasonable means of "trying not to overtax a pretty young medium."