Solving TV ad problems on- and offline

June 16, 2009 — Abigail Hamilton

Image courtesy of AdWeek

According to Ad Week, Ace Metrix is introducing a near-real-time TV commercial testing platform. That’s all fine and all, but the news reminded me of how more pressing advertising problems remain unsolved. Online advertising — including online TV advertising — is failing to monetize as well as people need it to.

With computers delivering rich user information to ad servers and quanitifiable (not estimated!) viewership and demographic information, online advertising should cost advertisers a lot to deliver to a few people — because advertisers can find the right people. Their target audience, not a random crowd. Online TV is driving this formula in the right direction, because viewers are very intolerant of too much in-stream advertising.

Viewers are happy to “pay” for their TV by watching ads, but they “snap” and become hostile if the ad-for-content trade is imbalanced. After all, one of the reasons they are turning to the computer for TV is that primetime TV is now 41% commercials.

Online, TV viewers can be targeted to see ads that have a much, much better chance of being relevant to them. Traditional TV, not so much: How many Viagra, WeedEater, etc. ads and promos for shows I will not watch must I endure to get my TV content?

I’ll be interested to see if online ad rates go up, and their effectiveness goes up with it, due to sharp targeting and fewer competing/offputting ads.

Meanwhile, I’m pondering whether Ace Metrics is using the same old small-sample, unscientific approach, or whether its verbatim opinions (self-reporting) add something user behavior analysis misses?

The system evaluates dozens of variables across an array of demographic and geographic targets, but also asks panelists to provide their personal impression of spots. According to Goldman, more than 70 percent of panelists answer that open-ended question in detail, providing customers with a library of “verbatim” qualitative material to help assess ads.

The responses are crunched by proprietary algorithms that are used to generate an overall “Ace” score for each spot, as well as separate scores for individual variables.

Thoughts?!

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Posted in Television traditions. Comments

Mechelle

Yeah, I see the point here.

But, what I see on the net is mostly lame programming and expensive looking ads.

Take Hulu for example, the movies they have on that site are mostly B quality at best, but the ads look new and expensive.

I feel they are really really taking advantage of me when I see that.

If they want to run first class programming, then run first class ads I'm all for it.

But, this way, I just get grumpy as heck.

I told Hulu about this and they say, well, too bad. We can only just get crappy stuff and call it good. The studios won't give us anything good to run. Their very careful about keeping the good stuff to themselves. I don't want to hear that kind of thing.

If Hulu wants to run crappy movies, then stop with the ads already. I can get just as good on YouTube and I don't have to waste my life watching ads.

And, for $10 per month, I can get every first run movie I've ever wanted to see through NetFlix without having to see Prius ads a million times already. I have seen enough Prius ads so I would NEVER buy the car. The ads make the product a joke when run with a 40 year old Japanese monster movie.

Hulu says that they are being really careful about content. But, if that is being careful, I would hate to see them get sloppy.

If they were running new releases or something, I would expect to see up to date ads, and I would watch them gladly, and wouldn't have such bad feelings about Prius for example. But as it is, the ads are hurting the products more in my mind than helping.

Thanks for bringing this stuff up. You hit a nerve.

Abigail Hamilton

Mechell,

Thanks for all the great comments, especially these about advertising and its alignment to the content it is paired with.