Critical Perspectives in Advertising

TV Commercials-the basics They are produced and aired by how

long they are: normally 15, 30 and 60 seconds

Airtime is sold in bulk- people and companies usually don’t just have their CXs run one or two times

The repetition, TV people will tell you, is the key

The more a CX is shown and seen the more effective it can be

The growth of 15 second commercials

Case Study-Pinewood Prep CX This commercial for a local private

school ran for two months this summer- Here

The purpose was to attract new students

The target market: Dorchester, Berkeley Counties, and North Charleston

Comcast Cable was consulted and an account exec put together a proposal

Pinewood budgeted $2,500 for TV/cable and a few thousand more for newspaper advertising

Measuring ViewersThe Nielsen Media Research Way

Ratings and Shares are the numbers used to calculate and compare program viewership

Rating= Number of households watching a program Number of TV households (HH)

Share of Audience= Number of HH watching a program Number of Households Using Television (HUT)

In the U.S. for 2010-11 there are 115.9 million TV households, according to Nielsen

So a rating/share point equals about 1.16 million homes or households (not viewers)

Some current ratings examples See Frequently asked Questions about TV

ratings The Super Bowl Annually Pulls in No. 1 ratings

in U.S.

Nielsen has it critics Nielsen’s research is bought by networks, local

TV/cable stations and advertisers Its findings have long been suspect by critics because

they are based on a small sample group of 5,000 households (out of 100 million+)

These homes have set-top boxes called audimeters that when used properly, record what shows are being watched on all televisions in a home and what age range, or 'demographic' the person watching falls into

During so-called “sweeps weeks” in February, May, July, and November every U.S. TV market is surveyed– the ratings help local stations determine advertising rates

Paper surveys are filled out by volunteers who may– or may not– diligently and accurately complete them daily

Not Perfect- But Needed Despite its flaws, the Nielsen (and for

radio, Arbitron) ratings present useful information at an affordable price to advertisers and to the TV industry

With our large commercial broadcasting systems, some form of the ratings will always be around

More analytics programs are being developed that can help track the effectiveness of advertising messages

Look at You Tube’s “Insight” feature using my

St. Martin video