Nielsen solicits views on Commercial Minute Ratings.

Nielsen Media Research today met with more than 100 clients to discuss various options for providing commercial minute ratings for television advertising.

Because different clients require different levels of granularity and flexibility in their ratings data, Nielsen will: 1) enhance existing products to provide highly granular data so that clients will have all the data they need to create commercial ratings at the minute level on up and for any interval of DVR playback from 1 minute to 7 days; and 2) continue to move forward with developing an average commercial minute ratings file (MIT), which provides commercial ratings in a convenient format for clients’ commonly used legacy software systems.

Enhancements to Nielsen’s All Minute Data File and NPOWER Analysis System

Nielsen announced that, beginning April 24, 2007, it will make available to clients all the data they need to create their own ratings for any given minute of the day for any period of DVR playback they want through its All Minute Data File. Beginning January 29, 2007, this same analytical capability will be added to Nielsen’s NPOWER software.

This enhancement will allow advertising agencies, advertisers, and programmers to develop individualized minute-by-minute ratings of national commercials by demographic group for all national television programs, including DVR playback at any interval up to 7 days. New file formats for the All Minute Data File will be supplied to Nielsen clients and their third-party software solution providers early next week.

Based on today’s meeting, Nielsen believes there is continued interest in an average commercial minute ratings file, and the specifications and timing for this new product will be determined by month’s end. At the client meeting there was much discussion around several areas for which decisions need to be made. Among these is significant client interest in the development of additional data streams for this particular file, especially Live + 2 Days and Live + 3 Days. Nielsen will spend the next two weeks consulting further with clients and will then announce when the average commercial minute ratings file will become available (the date being no later than May 31, 2007), and what streams of ratings data it will include.

During the meeting, Nielsen presented an analysis of DVR playback that found that among 18-49 year olds recording prime-time programming,

* The DVR playback within two days was: 76% for broadcast networks; 85% for ad-supported cable networks; and 85% for all syndicated shows.

* The DVR playback within three days was 84% for broadcast networks, 89% for ad-supported cable networks and 91% for all syndicated shows.

“The goal of today’s client meeting was to bring clients together to seek feedback on what their needs are for commercial ratings,” said Sara Erichson, Nielsen General Manager of National Services. “This was a very productive meeting in which diverse opinions were expressed. We will continue to review the various options and seek additional opinions on what best meets the needs of the industry. It seems clear that there is no ‘one-size-fits all’ solution to commercial ratings, and that providing the industry with multiple tools that range from very flexible and granular to more standardized formats is the best approach.”