This post was originally published on this site
I’m currently consulting on a project that involves comparing data from one of the major TV currency measurement companies with data from an ACR-supported ad measurement provider that is not an industry currency and has no interest in being one. Specifically, we looked at estimated audience impressions from a major U.S. broadcast group, aggregated across their markets to reflect total 2024 impressions.
What we found was stunning: There was upwards of 60% discrepancy between the two sources. While it’s understandable that an audience measurement company and an ad intelligence platform — one estimating viewership, the other counting ad occurrences — would show some variation, a gap of this magnitude raises serious questions. How can one source report less than half the impressions of the other and still be considered credible?
Should The Industry Be Concerned?
Imagine you’re a broadcaster selling a show based on an estimated audience of 400,000 impressions, when in reality, the show is delivering closer to 1 million. That discrepancy means broadcasters are leaving money on the table, while advertisers are getting a tremendous deal.
Wouldn’t it be a game-changer if broadcasters could definitively prove their programming is delivering double the impressions currently credited by traditional measurement? You’d think the buy-side would pay more for that kind of verified performance. Yet network executives tell me that buyers won’t adjust pricing, even with definitive third-party proof of a larger audience.
This logic seems inconsistent: If a measurement company reports an audience doubling week-over-week, buyers adjust their spend accordingly. But when a competing data