Nielsen to Offer Commercial Ratings

Yep, you read it right, Nielsen, the people who deliver the ratings for TV shows now are now going to offer ratings on commercials. This is so the networks can say- “sorry, we delivered an audience- they just thought your commercial sucked.”

Which brings me back to the monster sitting in the room- who is rating the audience? While Nielsen offers all kinds of demographic info- it’s still broad swipe data- which is so passe.

All these attempts to improvise a way to avoid the inevitable- a unique data set about each viewer- with all the likes and dislikes - and preferences- that allows advertisers to absolutely nail down who is seeing what ad- and when- and then getting feedback- think Amazon.com with it’s suggestions, it’s reviews - all on steroids- but not quite as bad as the ACLU pizza scenario. You would actually receive credit for viewing and interacting with commercials in the form of discounts on the programming you wish to watch.

The real future of TV advertising is more like a website- and as the two merge, you will be hard pressed to tell the difference. Commercials will have stats packages much like websites- telling marketers exactly what they need to know about the buyer- so they can either continue marketing to them, change their message, or abandon all hope.

And Nielsen, should abandon all hope of this service offering meaningful data.