Commentary
The Short Attention Spans Of Trade Associations
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, September 25, 2024
The Attention Council, a quasi trade association formed by the burgeoning attention metrics supply chain five years ago, is being folded into the 15-year-old Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), which itself was folded into the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) six years ago.
The moves don't just …
5 comments about "The Short Attention Spans Of Trade Associations".
Read more comments >
Next story loading 
Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
Joe, as you know, I've been saying for some time now that the ad time sellers are firmly in control---as they do mst of the funding for the "audience" research---so I agree with you. The solution, however, will not be easy---if it is even attepmted. Why? Because of advertiser indifference. Yet it's their ad dollars that are being sought after --and spent.
What amazes me is the lack of understanding by the media sellers of how advertisers---CMOs and brand managers---really think. The sellers believe that big numbers help sell their medium---but they are wrong---just ask the magazine folks. For years they relied on big pass-along"readership" numbers to compete with TV ---yet their share of ad dollars slowly declined. So they started to cut rates--but now advertisers could buy all the GRPs they needed by using fewer pages---so what did the bigger numbers get the magazines?
The same point applies to TV---but there's a difference. Unlike print media, the typical branding advertiser who spends heavily on "TV" believes that this method of communication is the only way to get their ad messages across effectively. So they are sold on TV. If TV had attentiveness measurements---which the sellers have effectively banned as a standard metric, though it's allowed as an add-on metric in selected cases---advertisers would see that their true reach and frequencies in TV--ads actually viewed-----are much smaller than the current, inflated, audience stats indicate. How would they respond?---by dropping TV in favor or radio or print mediea? Not likely. More likely they would spend more in TV to get what they thought they were getting---or closer to it. So smaller but more relevant ad viewing numbers in this case would probably stimulate ad spend, not diminish it---in my ever humble opinion, of course.
Joe, a question regarding that tablle in your post. If I am reading it correctly, CTV commercials are twice as cost efficient as "TV" commercials---I assume this means linear TV---in reaching viewers attentively. Since TVision is reporting no difference in normative ad attentiveness ratios between the two platforms the only way this can be true is if CTV CPMs were half those of linear TV. Which as an overall average isn't true per our observations. Have I missed something?
@Ed Papazian: In terms of seconds viewed per ad dollar spent, but that's likely due to a lower clutter environment and forced viewing on most CTV platforms.
Did Wpromote use real person's based actual exposure data, i.e., Eyes/Ears-On measurement perhaps Lumen or TVision data for each of their reported "viewed" graphs; or, so called "viewable impressions" data which ONLY represents device-based content-rendered-counts. The latter would provide very different graphs and conclusions versus the former. As you are aware our industry has a nasty habit of using terms that would not stand up to scrutiny or have become nebulous, i.e., "impressions"!
Tony, in this case it wouldn't matter as you would get approximately the same result if the calculations were based on set usage or "viewing". My problem is this. I know that CTV CPMs for traditional TV advertisers in the upfront were negotiated down to the point where they came very close to linear TV CPMs---lower than broadcast TV but higher than cable., Also TVision reports about the same degree of commercial attentiveness and dwell time for CTV and linear. So the only way CTV could top linear by a huge margin in attentive seconds per commercial is if its CPM was much lower. It looks like a per commercial stat which applies regardless of the ad clutter differences.