TV Moves To Three Screens

TV marketers have seen the light; once your ratings fall or decline no choice is left, I suppose. Reaching the third screen and the second screen can add great value to a broadcaster. Few broadcast stations have allowed thier network to stay ahead of "new channels"; Capitol Broadcasting Company has really lead the way in using new media channels to reach thier viewers and protect and even gain greater market share. Take a look at News Over Wireless over 90 broadcast groups are now signed up to use Capitol's News Over Wireless service. This article goes to show others are catching on, and heads will bump but that is the learning curve and this is very exciting news for the advertising and media industry as a whole!

Hearst-Argyle TV Inks YouTube Deal
Katy Bachman
JUNE 04, 2007 -

In a precedent-setting deal for the local TV business, Hearst-Argyle Television announced Monday an agreement with Google's YouTube. Effective today, five local Hearst-Argyle stations in Boston (WCVB-TV); Manchester, N.H. (WMUR-TV); Sacramento (KCRA-TV); Pittsburgh (WTAE-TV); and Baltimore (WBAL-TV), will begin posting video content to dedicated channels on YouTube. Plans are for all 29 Hearst-Argyle stations to have channels on YouTube.Although TV networks have done deals with YouTube, the agreement with Hearst-Argyle is a first for local TV.The deal is a natural extension of Hearst-Argyle’s strategy to aggressively distribute its local TV content on all three screens, the TV, the PC and mobile devices.“We have invested significant resources in our growing digital media efforts,” said Terry Mackin, executive vp of Hearst-Argyle Television, who in January, turned his attention to digital media full time. “With Google and YouTube, we can now better engage users and advertisers with our award-winning local video content and with new user-generated content while further broadening our reach beyond the boundaries of our media markets.”

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Nielsen-Goes Live!

This should be interesting.


Agencies and Networks Ponder Nielsen Ad Ratings

By LOUISE STORY
Published: June 1, 2007
THE NIELSEN COMPANY, long the arbiter of television viewership, released standardized ratings of commercials yesterday, giving advertisers more information about how often viewers stay tuned during commercial breaks.
The ratings will trickle into computer systems at television networks and advertising agencies today while ad executives are negotiating billions of dollars of television sales for next year, and it is unclear how the new ratings will affect those deals. The commercial viewership data is not new — Nielsen has included it in one of its main data systems since the end of January — but now the data will be released every week in a standard, easy-to-read format.
“This is going to give everyone the ability, all parties involved, to start speaking the same language,” said Sam Armando, senior vice president and video research director at Starcom USA, an agency in the Publicis Groupe that purchases ads.
Consumer brand companies have traditionally decided how much to pay for television time based on Nielsen’s estimates of how many people watch certain programs. But as more people watch programs on digital video recorders through TiVo and other services, advertisers have become concerned that people might be zipping past their messages. The new ratings estimate the number of people, on average, watching ads over the course of a program.
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Advertisers have been most concerned about whether people who own DVRs watch their ads, because those viewers can fast-forward through ads with the click of a remote.
But to the relief of networks, Nielsen data has shown that on average, people with DVRs still see about two-thirds of ads in their television viewing. That’s because about half of television viewing in households with DVRs is played back after the original broadcast of the program, and about 40 percent of the commercials in that time-shifted viewing are not fast-forwarded.
“The notion a year ago was that any commercial that was viewed on a time-shifted DVR had no value,” said Alan Wurtzel, president for research at NBC Universal. “All of that was wrong.”
Yesterday, Nielsen released similar data about viewing patterns. The data was based on viewership from the first week of May and showed that most DVR playback takes place within a day of the program’s broadcast. Broadcast television programs tend to be played back through DVRs more frequently than cable programs, and news and sports events are most often watched live.
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In DVR households, viewers of broadcast television programs like “The Office” on NBC and “The Family Guy” on Fox are most likely to watch commercials. Thus, television networks with lots of time-delayed viewing on DVRs stand to gain the most from commercial ratings, if they can keep their fans from fast-forwarding through ads.

Sell Out, Smart NBC

More on this later......

A Division of NBC Buys Out One of Its Harshest Online Critics

By MARIA ASPAN
Published: March 19, 2007
"In a review of “Top Design,” the reality show on Bravo Networks, a staff writer for the Web site Televisionwithoutpity.com mused that in the future, the show would be “just another filthy memory whose outcome I’ve long since forgotten.”

He can thank his new employers for the memories. Bravo, a division of NBC Universal, announced its acquisition of Television Without Pity on Tuesday. The television review Web site joins the network’s other online outlets, including the broadband channels BrilliantButCancelled.com, OUTzoneTV.com and getTRIO.com.

Television Without Pity, which provides reviews and commentary on television shows ranging from “American Idol” to “Ugly Betty,” has become well known in the television industry and the online community for its sharp, witty reviews. "

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Please calm down, Google has a very long way to go.

Google Planning a TV Ad Takeover?
By Nicholas Carlson

"Google is currently running a trial of test ads on cable as part of its larger plan to move into television advertising. Google didn't offer many details about the trial but in an e-mail sent to internetnews.com, a company spokesperson said the company is running a small, early-phase trial working closely with a small number of partners and advertisers. Google's plan is to "add value to TV advertising by making this important medium more relevant for users, measurable and more accountable for existing and new advertisers," the spokesperson continued.
Google's cable ad test is similar to its beta test of Google Audio Ads in December. The company invited a small group of AdWords advertisers to place 30-second radio ads on hundreds of radio stations across the U.S. The test allowed advertisers to target their ads by location, station type, day of week and time of day. Reports showed when and where the ads ran after they hit the airwaves.

These recent moves to radio and TV are not Google's first departure from online search marketing. Its November print ads test allowed advertisers to bid through an online marketplace for space in more than 50 major newspapers across the U.S. At the time, Google said participating newspapers included the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Denver Post. And in 2005, Google brought its AdSense contextual advertising service to RSS content in a beta test. The test followed Google's AdSense model for Web sites and blogs. "

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