- A Metrics Miracle in
Metrics Insider on
12/09/2016
Josh Chasin is a poet -- and he knows it -- with this twist on a seasonal classic:" 'Twas the week before Christmas, when alone in my house/ I was finishing shopping, with a click of the mouse;/Then
I cleared out my browser cache, cookies deleted,/ In hopes of nefarious snooping, defeated."
- Advertising Works -- And How! in
Metrics Insider on
11/04/2016
Sometimes I worry that we digital cognoscenti can get so lost in the magic and elegance of all these awesome algorithms and Big Data assets, that we forget to take a step back and ponder the bigger
picture: the actual people out there on the other side of all those myriad screens.
- Advertising Works -- And How! in
Metrics Insider on
04/01/2016
Sometimes I worry that we digital cognoscenti can get so lost in the magic and elegance of all these awesome algorithms and Big Data assets, that we forget to take a step back and ponder the bigger
picture: the actual people out there on the other side of all those myriad screens.
- Inside Today's Digital Household in
Metrics Insider on
02/05/2016
There was a time when understanding consumer use of the Internet was relatively simple - way more complex than understanding engagement with any other medium, sure, but still relatively simple. All we
needed to deal with was engagement from computers. There were no tablets, no smartphones, no OTT; your thermostat wasn't a connected device.
- A Metrics Miracle in
Metrics Insider on
12/22/2015
Josh Chasin is a poet -- and he knows it -- with this twist on a seasonal classic:" 'Twas the week before Christmas, when alone in my house/ I was finishing shopping, with a click of the mouse;/Then
I cleared out my browser cache, cookies deleted,/ In hopes of nefarious snooping, defeated."
- For Best Results: Big Data, Meet Media Research in
Data and Targeting Insider on
12/21/2015
I've been thinking a lot about the deployment of Big Data assets in the digital space. Clearly, it is one of the most profound developments in digital metrics - and indeed, in our lives. The Internet
of Things is already here; we can pay with our watches, and we've got Google thermostats. But in our space, I worry that there is too much emphasis placed on "Big Data," and not enough on "Good Data."
Perhaps here the data scientist can learn from the media researcher.
- Rethinking Traditional Audience Measurement Through A Digital Framework in
Metrics Insider on
12/11/2015
What would a video measurement system look like if one were to zero-base such a solution today, with the tools we have at hand, given the measurement challenges we face, while unencumbered by legacy
systems?
- Let's Not Forget: Digital Advertising Moves Products in
Metrics Insider on
11/11/2015
Lately it seems as if every article I read about digital advertising is about viewability, fraud, or ad blocking. "No one's seeing my ads!" "Robots are seeing my ads!" "Robots are blocking my ads!"
It's enough to make the casual reader think the sky was falling. I'm starting to think we're all collectively guilty of "burying the lede": that digital advertising works, persuades consumers, moves
products.
- Rethinking Traditional Audience Measurement Through A Digital Framework in
Metrics Insider on
10/22/2015
What would a video measurement system look like if one were to zero-base such a solution today, with the tools we have at hand, given the measurement challenges we face, while unencumbered by legacy
systems?
- Rethinking The Single Currency Model in
Metrics Insider on
10/16/2015
One of the long-standing assumptions in audience measurement has been the notion of currency - and more to the point, of a single currency. I learned about the one-currency model in a very real way
working at Arbitron in the '80s and '90s. We won one single-currency battle: spot radio measurement, where we competed with Birch Radio. And we lost one: spot TV, where we competed with Nielsen. But
I'd like to offer a radical opinion. In the digital age, multiple transactional media currencies can, do, and will continue to exist. Indeed, they need to exist.
- 3.know: A Conversation With Mix Modeling Pioneer Ed Dittus
by
Joe Mandese
(Media 3.0 on
08/25/2025)
I don't think Podunk is a PPM market.
- Jewish Stereotypes Get Animated In New Netflix Toon
by
Adam Buckman
(TVBlog on
08/22/2025)
This, I need? Another show I should watch?
- Trump's 'Kennedy Center Honors' Power Play: 'I'm The Host!'
by
Adam Buckman
(TVBlog on
08/19/2025)
“They all went through me,” Trump said of his hand-chosen honorees. “I turned down plenty that were too woke.”Could someone explain to me what "too woke" means? What exactly is the right amount?
- Wieser Is Right: CTV Is Tiny Fraction Of Ads Viewed On TV
by
Dave Morgan
(Media Insider on
08/07/2025)
There aee a couple of other dynamics at play. We know that tonnage of viewing is quickly shifting to streaming; and that impressions per minute viewed on streaming are way lower than on linear. But at the same time, the cohort of viewers who do most of their viewing via streaming are incredibly difficut to reach sufficiently. There aren't enough available impressions to go around to reach that cohort. And dumping more money into linear TV isn't going to solve that porblem, becsuse that's not where they are. But here's the crazy thing, and I do not have data to dupport this, but I'll submit that all of us who watch a lot of ad-supported streaming content know this is true. If you binge a show on an ad-supported streaming service, you're going to see the same as, if you watch long enough, like 15 times. Every time my wife and I binge a show with ads, she makes fun of me. "If you people are so smart, why did we see that Neil Degrasse Tyson TikTok STEM ad 14 times tonight?" And I don't know what to tell her. I'd love to understand this. Too many of us are primarily available only via streaming, there's nowhere enough impressions to meet the needs of all the advertisers who want to reach us-- but we see the same ads over and over. One colleague with HoldCo and network experience told me recently that he thought this is the dark underbelly of advanced targets-- that when targets get thin enough, each of us sees only the ads for the tiny target we belong to (say, lefthanded diabetic cat owners.) Dave, what do we need to do to fix this?
- Tariff Terrorism: Trump's Coffee Tax, And the Price You Pay
by
Steven Rosenbaum
(Media Insider on
08/11/2025)
The number of things Trump has already done that are constitutionally prohibited is comically long. As with pretty much everything else-- if he decides to run for a third term, who's going to stop him?
- New Head-Spinning Media Spinoff Math: Selling Network-Owned Stations?
by
Wayne Friedman
(TV Watch on
07/31/2025)
Another underlying issue in the value of broadcast television stations is that since the inception of TV, the primary busineess asset that gave a TV station value was a license to spectrum space, a scarce commoddity. In this day and age, the notion of using this spectrum space to get your TV show into my living room is archaic. TV stations didn't make money because they had good shows; they made money because they had the ONLY shows. Now almost no one needs broadcast spectrum space to watch "TV." And when the value of spectrum space approaches zero... what exactly is the differentiated asset a TV sstation offers? _________ Note: Cable and satellite could have largely disintermediated broadcast TV, but must-carry and retransmission fees prevented that from happening.
- Total Ad-Supported Viewing Up 2% In Q2: Nielsen
by
Wayne Friedman
(Television News Daily on
07/29/2025)
The Gauge numbers are interesting, but they always leave me with questions.(Maybe that's the idea.)So 73.6% of viewing is to ad-supported TV, Ad-supported streaming was 45.3%; Broadcast ad-supported, 26.0%; ad-supported cable was 28.7%.The latter 3 figures sum to 100%, so ad-supported streaming, e.g., is 45.3% of the 73.6%.Here's my question. If time spent viewing ad-supported content splits out--Streaming: 45.3%Cable: 28.7%Broadcast: 26.0%--What is the distribution of impressions, as opposed to time spent? We know spot load is lower on streaming; what does the shift in viewing-- specifically ad-supported viewing-- to streaming mean for the pool of available impressions? Are there fewer and fewer impressions available as viewers move to streaming? If yes, is this reduction uniform by age cohort? (One assumes not.) What % of impressions does streaming deliver? (One assumes fewer than 45.3%.) I realize Nielsen doesn't want to give away the farm in a freely available report. But these are the kinds of questions that would keep me up at night, if I wasn't always so tired.
- Is Frequency An Effective Strategy?
by
Cory Treffiletti
(Media Insider on
07/16/2025)
I was recently bemoaning to a colleague with agency and TV network experience that were all so damned smart about targeting and activation, but that if my wife and I sit down to watch for one-hour shows in a row on ad-supported streaming on a binge night, we'll see the same two ads like 4 times in every episode. he told me that this was flipside of advance targets; when the targets get really granular, there aren't enough advertisers bidding on you. So they end up showing you the same ads over and over. Meanwhile, every binge night, I have to listen to my wife ragging on me, "if you people are so smart, why is this the 15th time we have seen this ad tonight?" I wish I had a good answer for her. As regards Ryan Adams, another point worth noting is that Wednesdays and maybe Black Hole are really the only decent studio albums he's put out since 2020-- and there have been FOURTEEN of them.
- Powered By Netflix, Streaming's Share Soars To 46% In June
by
Wayne Friedman
(Television News Daily on
07/15/2025)
There's a problem for the linear TV companies though, even going whole hog into streaming.Once upon a time there was broadcast. Basically, you put a big stick in a field, ran ads, and cashed checks. Your broadcast license-- allocating you exclusive access to spectrum space-- was a license to print money. Access to consumers was a scarce commodity and you owne a nice chunk of it.Then cable came around. Uh oh-- this can't be good! "instead of one in 7 channels, now I'm one of 36!" Only cable brought must-carry and retransmission fees, and now the broadcasters got PAID for the right to carry them. Distribution went from basically free to a profit center. You made money before you even sold a spot.But now... streaming. THere is no cap on consumer access; all you need is bandwidth, which isn't capped or licensed by the government. Now, instead of getting paid by the company with the cable or fiber, the networks have to bear bandwidth costs to get their shows (and ads) into my house. The migration from cable to streaming turns distribution from a preofit center to a cost center.At the same time, no one has more bandwidth than companies lilke Google, Amazon, or Apple. These companies are 10X the size of the traditional programmers, and they may not even have to make money on TV. Personally, I buy most of the streaming services for business reasons, but there's one I know I'm NEVER going to cancel-- Prime. And the reason I'll never cancel Prime is, free shipping. How does Paramount or Comcast compete with free shipping? We got Apple TV because we bought a phone. So yeah, they have to embrace streaming, simply because tyou don't get to choose the mode of distribution by which consiumers access your content. Just ask record companies. And newspapers. But the shift from cable to streaming fundsmentally and permanently alters the economics of the TV business. Broadcasting I Love Lucy to my living room in 1957 was a way better economic proposition than streaming Law & Order: SVU to me in 22025.
- Dickishness 2.0
by
Joe Mandese
(Red, White & Blog on
07/03/2025)
The cruelty appears to be a feature, not a bug. Sadly, the real problem isn't him. It's us.