AHAA Issues Official Position on Nielsen Television Index (NTI)

The Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA), representing 85 member agencies and more than 90 percent of the approximately $5 billion spent on advertising to the US Hispanic market, enthusiastically endorses NTI and congratulates Nielsen and our network partners Univision, Telemundo and TV Azteca for moving in this direction; however, AHAA does not support the use of NTI in the 2006 upfront advertising buying season.

NTI is the single-source reporting tool to measure total audience viewership including both Spanish- and English-language media. Proper reporting of viewers is vital to the Hispanic advertising industry and the data will better equip Hispanic agencies to deliver optimum media plans and investment recommendations for clients.

Additionally, AHAA believes that the shift from Nielsen Hispanic Television Index (NHTI) to NTI will help validate the reach and impact of Spanish-language television against other networks and may attract more marketers to invest in advertising to the Hispanic market. In order for a significant change in spending to occur, however, marketers must begin to consider marketing in terms of the total market including ethnic audiences. Today, the general market is defined as the total population, yet most marketers when conducting research do not ensure proper representation of ethnic audiences although Hispanic and African American represent over a quarter of the population.

Comparable measurement of network viewership will highlight the power of the US Hispanic population and the incredible business potential the segment represents which warrants perhaps a larger share of the dollars than currently being allocated to targeting the Hispanic segment. Thus, we believe that the realization of a vision created nearly 12 years ago with the introduction of NTI likely will positively influence agency and client business.

That said, we oppose the use of NTI for this year’s upfront negotiations next month. Although the data has been released, we will need at least one year’s worth of comparable data to analyze trends. Also, Hispanic agencies, already deep into media planning and analysis, have not been given access to the granularity of data that is available currently through NHTI. We have access to total numbers through NTI but not Hispanic and not by language segment. AHAA believes agencies are unable to provide clients with the elementary assessment necessary to guide the media business process using NTI and is therefore in support of waiting until 2007 for usage of the NTI for buying purposes in next year’s upfronts instead.

Furthermore, AHAA is concerned that the data accurately reflects the total consumer population. Although NTI represents improvements in key areas such as representation of diversified countries of origin and an increase in overall sample size, there are areas still requiring additional improvement for example, weighting of the Hispanic population. The Hispanic population tends to be younger than the non-Hispanic population; therefore, in order to get a good national projection of viewership, the weighting of Hispanic demographics should be different than the weighting of non-Hispanic. NHTI staff members understood the unique needs associated with measuring the Hispanic audience and it is imperative that Nielsen commit to a specialized Hispanic focus within its overall operations moving forward to monitor and address these and other issues consistently.

AHAA agencies also are concerned about costs associated with the use of NTI . Nielsen has not provided a cost structure for Hispanic agencies for continued access to NTI data and secondary providers may assess agencies an additional charge to read the new breaks in their systems. A task force within AHAA has been created to monitor the methodologies and recruitment efforts used to measure Hispanic audiences, as well as to ensure that the same pricing methodology is used for both general market and Hispanic agencies.

Moving forward, NTI will help create parity in measuring and understanding viewership across all audiences. However, rushing now to use a tool that is not fully developed and may not provide an accurate perspective of Hispanic market viewing could diminish the momentum our industry has gained within corporate America . Creating and executing insightful communication that speaks to, and motivates, Hispanic consumers is critical and AHAA believes NTI will provide agencies a better tool to more effectively and efficiently reach and engage the Hispanic target…in 2007.