In Our Own Words

New Tools, Same Approach

Yesterday Emily Steel of the Wall Street Journal published an article on the new tools and formulas ad agencies, TV advertisers and networks are employing to gauge the success of a TV show. This new formula ranges from Nielsen audience numbers, the number of Facebook Fans, online search references and other social media benchmarks. The article makes it sound as if this strategy is a new way to discern the TV hits from the flops. That using something other than Nielsen numbers, regardless of the measuring stick, is revolutionary. I do believe that the tools are new, but the science or should I say the approach is nothing new.

For years agency folks have been going beyond the Nielsen numbers to gauge the impact that a show has on culture and popular opinion. Well before being “Liked” or “Followed”, the water cooler effect from the Cheers and Seinfeld eras was constantly being injected into the equation of determining which TV shows carried more weight. And ultimately which TV shows would help propel a brand’s position and insert it into the conversation the next day at work or the gym.

While reading the article something hit me. It appears that the value and contribution of Nielsen’s ratings might be on the down swing in light of the other tools at the fingertips of my fellow media buyers and myself. If its buzz that matters, there are countless tools and services at an agency’s disposal to get a sense of where a TV show or brand stands in the online and offline world of chatter. These tools can provide a pulse of what people think about a show, how they talk about it, the duration and magnitude of the conversation and ultimately how that show is shaping people’s lives. This is all well outside of the boundaries of a Nielsen rating while at the same time quickly becoming a regular yardstick.

This leads me to a final comment. With all of these conversations and activity taking place regarding a TV show, it opens up countless possibilities of how to bring a brand, a TV show and an audience segment together. And with such possibilities comes the need to monitor and decipher which channels are generating the anticipated return and which ones are falling below the line. So just as the possibilities of how to communicate grows, so do the needs for more advanced skills in tracking, reporting and analytics. I believe that this should be the big take-away from the article. There is a laundry list of ways to gauge the success of a TV show in this day and age. But only smart, thorough reporting and compilation of data will reveal which ones matter the most.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

by Eric Morgan

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