How Short Should Ads Be?

Ads keep getting shorter, but not subliminal.

Way back in TV advertising history, there were 60-second ads. Some people still remember those; there was even an article in The Atlantic looking back on them, wistfully.

Ads used to be longer

Like most GenXers, I grew up with :30s and :15s on TV. Conventional wisdom, after I joined the industry but before bandwidth permitted online video, was to run :30s until awareness reached some level when :15s could take over as reminders or reinforcement.

Miller High Life ran 1-second ads in
the 2009 Super Bowl, featuring
the late, great Windell Middlebrooks

During my international career, I became familiar with :20s and even :10s. In Argentina, where I lived and worked for three years, ads could be any length client and agency wanted, because media time was bought and sold on a second-by-second basis. So, we made :17s, :36s, :52s, etc.

Maybe that Argentine flexibility is going global. 30-second units are still common on linear TV, but audiences can be reached on other platforms that allow for all sorts of possibilities. Bandwidth has improved and the shift to mobile devices and mobile-friendly formats, like YouTube and TikTok, permits shorter ads and new rules for what makes effective communication. The six-second format is common.

But does the six-second format work?

Shorter ads can work, but...

Magna Global, the IPG media research hub, has studied ad lengths across different video platforms. Their 2015 study found that even 5-second ads could build awareness, but it took :15s or :30s to drive brand favorability and purchase intent.

A lot changed in Magna's more recent study, just published in the last few weeks. This time, they found :06s and :15s to be similar in their ability to drive search intent, brand preference, and purchase intent. Why would that be?

One reason may be the platforms on which they ran the test: Snapchat, a video aggregator (i.e., YouTube) and a Full Episode Player (FEP, perhaps a streaming app like Hulu). Audiences are already accustomed to short ad lengths in these environments, and there were no :30s tested for comparison.

The Snapchat part of the test was interesting because more people watched :15s all the way through, but they were all placed mid-roll, about ten seconds into the content, so perhaps viewers were really staying for the content, which might explain the other finding that these ads were slightly less convincing.

YouTube was different. Viewers didn’t like the :15s, which were skippable after six seconds, but keep in mind that all of these were pre-roll ads, meaning that they were a barrier to the selected content. On the FEPs, :15s were better-received, but may also have been more expected during a 20-minute TV program.

None of these findings should surprise us, especially when you consider:

• Linear TV wasn’t part of the test and neither were 30-second ads. It would be instructive to have these points of comparison.

• The three viewing platforms in the test give individualized watching experiences, which may improve the ability of short copy to get across its messages, and also lead to less patience for longer ads.

• We don’t know the quality of the ad creative shown. There were four brands included (Clinique, Mini, Lego and a “major CPG brand”) but we can only assume their ads were adequately memorable and persuasive.

On that last point, not only do we not know the quality of the ad creative, we don't know if it took full advantage of the format. Traditionally, :15s were (mostly) just shorter versions of :30s, both seen on linear TV. Newer formats, like a six-second pre-roll on YouTube, are seen by an individual person watching a very small screen. That calls for a different creative approach, and opens creative avenues instead of closing them.

It's always nice to have more time to get your message across, and :30s will continue to run on TV. But newer formats may prove to be a useful piece of your overall plan.

Book Review: If Then by Jill Lepore

If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

By Jill Lepore

Liveright Publishing, 432 pages

The guys who invented predictive analytics never saw failure coming.

That’s the upshot of Jill Lepore’s latest book, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future. 

Ostensibly, it’s the story of Simulmatics, founded in 1959 on the idea that with enough data collected in one place, everything and everyone would become predictable. The name is an attempted portmanteau combining the words “simulation” and “automatic.” You’ve probably never heard of Simulmatics because it folded in 1970, but during its short history it played a role in electing John F. Kennedy, mismanaging the Vietnam War, seeking answers to 1960s social upheaval, and speeding the presence of mainframe computers at advertising agencies.

If Then: Book Summary

The founder of Simulmatics was Ed Greenfield, a midcentury ad man, but not like Don Draper. Lepore delightfully introduces him: “He was like a ten-million-volt Looney Tunes electric magnet, a giant red-handled iron U that pulled everyone toward him.” His personality, his ability to influence others, was what propelled him. As evidence, the story includes a lot of bold-faced names, especially from Democratic Party politics, which is what Greenfield cared about most.

Indeed, he built an impressive team. Lepore introduces the other main players early, and efficiently. Harold Laswell, the influential communications theorist. Eugene Burdick, novelist and self-styled adventurer. Alex Bernstein, mathematician and computer programming pioneer. Ithiel de Sola Pool, a social scientist specializing in technology. Bill McPhee, a FORTRAN programmer – and this is such an emblematic aspect of the story – who wrote “the core intellectual property” of Simulmatics while he was committed to Bellevue. Yes, a mental hospital.

Punchcards
on parade

Like any startup, the group had big plans. They bragged they had invented “the A-bomb of the social sciences.” They called it a “People Machine” that could predict the outcomes of advertising campaigns and government policy initiatives. Sadly, they couldn’t get out of their own way. They overplayed their true role in JFK’s winning presidential campaign of 1960. They overpromised how they could help the New York Times analyze the 1962 midterm elections in real time. They overestimated, tragically, how Western-style social science techniques could understand Vietnamese culture. They oversold their value to blue chip brands but opened the door to a legion of market research providers still selling soap today.

One gap in the story: What projects did they actually finish? The only projects fully described were the political ones, and there was only fleeting mention of having sold studies to various corporations, like Bristol Laboratories, Philip Morris, P&G, and some others. Simulmatics was always starved for data, so most of the projects had little effect. Still, it would have been interesting to read more about those episodes.

Eventually Simulmatics folded, although some of its work survived in projects undertaken by individual team members, thus laying the groundwork for today’s data-driven marketing. They accomplished just enough to push things forward, but not enough to get pinned with credit or blame for what we have now. Oddly, Simulmatics’ most accurate predictions came not from data but from the very human insights of Ithiel de Sola Pool. He envisioned with eerie accuracy the role of technology in our lives today: the interconnectedness of the World Wide Web, the ubiquity of social media, and the rise of “mobile computers,” today’s smartphones.

Why Simulmatics matters now

Lepore’s book is thoroughly researched and well-written. It’s a solid history, which is why Simulmatics matters: because we learn from history. Here’s what I took away:

• No data. It shouldn’t have been surprising, but was nevertheless shocking, how Simulmatics never seemed to have data that were complete or accurate. In an almost poignant moment, Lepore writes, “Pool raised the question that Simulmatics would never really answer: ‘What is the data we would need for this model?’” Ad agencies, which had data, filled the gap, bringing in their own IBM mainframes and offering the services to clients directly. Today we have plenty of data, but we still have to answer the question: Which data do we need to solve this problem?

• No humility. The Vietnam phase of the book is a troubling read. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1962: “Every quantitative measurement we have shows we are winning the war.” That might have been all too true; Lepore points out that military progress was measured by “the number of insurgents killed,” with the implication that indiscriminate killing ran up the numbers. Humility is a function of introspection. Are we thinking things through? Are we seeing the big picture? Are tracking the right metrics? These questions are relevant to the work we do today.

• No humanity. Lepore points out that computers can simulate a flight because physical laws like F=ma are constant. “But the computer simulation of human behavior … is much more difficult. Behavior is not a law.” If, as some Artificial Intelligence experts say, the brain is just a very sophisticated machine, then eventually we will create a machine that can think like a human brain. But there is a (so far) unquantified human element that no series of If-Then scenarios in FORTRAN, C++ or Python could ever predict.

Simulmatics failed where other succeeded. There’s still lots of room for modern failure, which is why these lessons from the past are important.

Display Ads: the New Subliminal Advertising

In the days of Ye Olde Marketing there was a belief in "subliminal advertising" -- the idea that TV commercials would be spliced with fleeting images, usually sexual, to overpower your psyche and make you buy something you didn't need.

Although the science behind subliminal stimuli is interesting, it's never really been used in advertising and we have no examples of it ever working.  Most of the urban legend is based on a 1957 movie theater experiment that never actually happened.  

Comedian Steven Wright sent this up with one of his 1980s one-liners:  "I saw a Subliminal Advertising executive….but only for a second."

Online Display is the New Subliminal Advertising

This all came to mind when reading the Internet Advertising Bureau's latest viewability standards:  "Desktop display ads to be considered viewable if 50% of their pixels are in view for a minimum of one second."

Banner ad?
I didn't see any
banner ad.

50% of the ad for just one second.  We used to call that subliminal advertising.

In a not very subliminal display of honesty, the IAB press release on this topic is headlined "100% Viewability Measurement Is Not Yet Possible".

Advertisers know this, as Kraft says it rejects 75-85% of online ad impressions and Google says 56% of online impressions actually aren't seen.

It's Like We Never Noticed This Before

How did we get to this point?

The Internet didn't used to allow advertising at all, banning it until 1991.  The first form of advertising was actually email — yes, direct mail — which as we all know spawned spam.  The first clickable display ad came in 1993, and in 1994 Wired started selling banner ads to clients like AT&T, with a click-through rate of 44% (no, that's not a typo, and we should point out that the click bait was an online tour of seven of the world's most acclaimed art museums).

These initial approaches revealed a direct-response mindset, and unrealistic expectations as to how perfectly measurable advertising would be on the Internet.  Not quite!  As click-through rates have dropped to infinitesimal numbers, online display has gone from marketing's Holy Grail to just billboards posted on the Information Superhighway.  Today's tools don't consistently measure page takeovers, road blocks and other customized placements.  As IAB president Randall Rothenberg said, "Different ad units, browsers, ad placements, vendors and measurement methodologies yield wildly different viewability numbers."  If you were expecting an accounting exercise that neatly reconciled everything, we don't have one.

The goal is "100% viewability" and at some point we'll get there.  In the meantime there will be some tough discussions among advertisers, agencies, media and researchers.  

Meanwhile, the irony is that an urban legend from 1957 is reality in 2015.

The State of TV Advertising Now That the Super Bowl Is Over

On Sunday, millions of people watched 4-1/2 hours of Live TV.

Today, millions of people will do the same.

As covered in my previous post, despite the popular reporting that TV is Dead, the medium is actually alive, well — and changing.  Live TV viewing is holding steady at 4-1/2 hours per day.  Much of that viewing happens on an actual TV.  At the same time, audiences are adopting new ways to watch TV, like DVRs, OTT, Online and Mobile.  It seems like we have video everywhere.

It's all TV

In the same way this blog says "it's all advertising" I'd say "it's all TV" when it comes to these new ways of delivering video.  Maybe we should say "it's all Video".  Either way, it's part of a trend as illustrated below in Twenty Years of TV Innovation.

What Social Media Taught Me on Super Bowl Sunday

My last post led to some enlightening discussions on Twitter and LinkedIn about the so-called Death of TV.  One insight was that when many people say "Death of TV" they actually mean "Death of Cable".  Much of the press on this subject talks about the cord cutters, and who can blame them?  Cable TV's delivery model forces you to buy up to 200 channels when most people watch no more than 17.

The Future of TV is Personalization

Which is a good reason to cheer for SlingTV, HBO Go, Google Chromecast and the other services starting to become available along with Hulu, Amazon Prime and Netflix.  All of these allow audiences to choose exactly what they want, which is why we said the other day that the future of TV is Personalization.  There's one day a year when 114.5 million people all watch one event, but during the rest of the year they all watch various programs that interest or entertain them.

It's all TV.  As the chart below illustrates, technology is meeting the demand for new ways to see what we want, when we want it.  TV's not dead.  It's innovating, growing and continuing to be a part of our lives.

Book Review: The Signal and The Noise

The Signal and The Noise:  Why So Many Predictions Fail -- but Some Don't

By Nate Silver

Penguin Press, 534 pages

Can you go to jail for promising your client great results?

Ask the Italian seismologists found guilty of manslaughter for underestimating the risk of what turned out to be a magnitude-6.3 earthquake that killed over 300 people.  They're one of the cases analyzed in The Signal and The Noise, a new book about successful and failed predictions.  Advertising isn't (usually) a life-or-death matter, but it is a major line item on your client's P&L.  You might not go to jail for a bad prediction, but you could get fired.  That's why I recommend this book:  It helps us understand the impact of so-called Big Data in marketing today.

The Signal and The Noise: Summary

In electrical engineering, “Signal to Noise" describes the relationship between signals that report a useful reading and random noise that makes signals hard to identify.  Similarly, as we drown in data, generating 2.5 quintillion bytes every day, it's harder to separate signal from noise.  Compounding the problem is our own subjectivity:  human beings, more than any other species, are wired to see patterns, and often in the data we see patterns that aren’t real.  Worse, we use those non-patterns to predict future events.  The solution is to embrace our subjectivity and test hypotheses, getting “closer and closer to the truth as we gather more evidence.”  Examples are drawn from pro baseball, politics, earthquakes, economics, epidemics, gambling, global warming, and terrorism.  The author, Nate Silver, knows whereof he speaks.  Years ago he built a reliable tool forecasting baseball player performance, and later gained wider fame for correctly predicting the state-by-state results of the last two presidential elections.

True to the topic, Silver’s analyses are sincere and (generally) objective.  It’s not the type of book, however, so common on the business shelf, that outlines 7 key findings or 10 ways to improve your predictive power.  In fact, buried on page 195 in one of the most hopeless cases – economics forecasting, which will destroy whatever confidence you had left in economists – are what I saw as his three keys to success:  (1) Improved computer power, (2) Better data collection, (3) Old-fashioned hard work.  Comically in a book that keeps reminding us that “to err is human”, there are some unfortunate typos like this one on page 379, quoting a NASA climate researcher:  “I finally realized the definition of rocket science is using relatively simple psychics to solve complex problems.”

Why Advertising people should read The Signal and The Noise

The book is relevant to marketing today because we have far more data than ever and, increasingly, the expectation that we can predict results.  If you think about it, our day-to-day decisions are predictions about what will succeed.  We launch that new product (and hope it isn’t in the 90% that fail this year).  We choose those three animatics for test (and pray that one of them scores).  We buy this medium over another (and look for which half of the ad budget we wasted). 

Silver points out that Prediction and Forecast are two different things.  A prediction is definitive, e.g., "this new product will achieve $60 million in Year I sales."  A forecast is probabilistic, e.g., BASES may tell you Year I sales within a +/- 20% range.  This once frustrated a CPG CEO who didn’t realize how his brand managers were jacking up the assumptions that went into the company’s BASES forecasts.  Of note, the U.S. Geological Survey explicitly states they can’t predict earthquakes – they work hard (and fruitlessly, to hear Silver tell it) to forecast earthquakes’ probability.  (Small comfort to Italian seismologists.)

Likewise there’s a difference between Risk and Uncertainty.  Risk is something you can put a price on, a calculable estimate.  Ipsos/ASI may report a persuasion score as having an 80% or 95% level of confidence.  That means there is a 20% or 5% risk the copy won’t be persuasive.  Uncertainty is risk that is harder to measure.  Silver’s example is the gross miscalculation by credit ratings agencies as to how risky collateralized debt obligations really were.  (The chapter on the 2008 financial meltdown, “A Catastrophic Failure of Prediction”, is worth a read if only to understand that fiasco in 28 simple pages.)

Three Lessons for Marketing and Advertising

All data is not created equal.  Silver admits that some things are easier to predict than others.  Baseball happens to have a rich set of data, whereas predicting earthquakes is virtually impossible because we can’t actually observe and record the subterranean shifting of tectonic plates.  The same lesson has historically separated direct response (did version A or version B have a higher response rate?) from advertising (which half of the budget am I wasting?).

Calibrate your crap detector.  The book is a treasure trove of ways we should not interpret data.  You’ll cringe at some of the mistakes – and realize you’ve made some of them yourself.  One of the more intriguing discussions is about “unknown unknowns” – what is it we don’t see because we would never dream of it?  Which leads to my last point.

Use your imagination.  We’re human and our subjective POV is inevitable, so why not use it? 

Silver’s personal template for prediction is called Bayes’s Theorem.  It’s essentially a way to apply the scientific method:  observe a phenomenon, develop a hypothesis to explain it, formulate a prediction from the hypothesis, and test the prediction.  To be clear, this is not a left-brain analysis that a computer could perform.  It requires human imagination.  Computers just help us calculate the possibilities.  

In other words:  It’s up to us to distinguish signal from noise.

Check out another Ad Majorem Book Review, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.

TV Keeps Rising from the Dead

Today's business news brings the latest examples of why the death of TV is greatly exaggerated.

Apple, to no one's surprise, has been briefing media companies on the next evolution of its Internet-based TV services. Among the innovations: Wireless streaming of video content from TVs to mobile devices, and using devices like the iPhone as a remote control. Among the questions: Will Apple evolve its current set-top box, or actually manufacture what we now call TV sets? You can read the original reporting in today's Wall Street Journal.

Hulu, meanwhile, saw an audience increase of +23% in November vs. the same month last year. Adweek points out that the data, via comScore, comes on the heels of Hulu's fresh supply of content from The CW, Sony Pictures Television, and Univision. Greg Jarboe lists some other reasons in a good post today over on Search Engine Watch.

Social Television

In a post last week on the HBR Blog, one of David Armano's social media trends to watch in 2012 was Social Television. As predictions go, this one doesn't go very far out on a limb. We've already observed the intense cross-over between Social Media and TV in consumer media multitasking. Armano does point out new services such as Get Glue, which allows audiences to check in to TV shows much like Foursquare lets you check in to actual locations. (Or not.)

No More Zombies Wandering in the Vast Wasteland

Digital delivery of TV by the likes of Apple and Hulu makes TV Social -- and Social Television may make TV more of a connected experience. TV in its infancy was a family activity: one TV set per household meant everyone gathered for Ed Sullivan or Bonanza. Later, TV became more of an individual activity: multiple TV sets per household allowed each person to watch programs tailored to their own tastes. Could it be that Social Television brings back TV as a way to connect?

Not only does TV keep rising from the dead, it may wind up curing some zombies.

Previous posts on this subject:
The Changing Role of TV
TV is Dead – Long Live TV

Reducing Assortment

In the past year or so you may have read about retailers “reducing assortment”, which in English means taking some brands and products off their shelves. You may also have heard about Walmart’s Project Impact, which sought to de-clutter their stores of signage as well as low-velocity SKUs. All retailers are doing this to some extent, so watch out, because if you really like Brand X, it might be gone when the store you shop reduces their assortment.

Why reduce assortment?

Why do this? Retailers say it makes shopping easier for their customers. In an interview with MediaPost this week, Stuart Taylor, VP/Customer Analytics for Nielsen, highlighted the ease-of-shopping rationale, saying 60% of the retail chains they surveyed “are doing it to reduce shopper confusion.” Research would seem to back him up. In comments to analysts last year, P&G’s then-CEO, A.G. Lafley, cited store tests where reduced assortment had no negative impact on sales or consumers’ sense of variety. In fact, he said, consumers believed they had more choices. I don’t doubt his research.

Real-world experience, however, hasn’t been so rosy. The most recent press about reducing assortment has focused on the consumer backlash. What? You mean I can’t buy Ben & Jerry’s here anymore? Walmart shoppers loyal to a delisted brand would have to complete their shopping trip at Target.

Reduce this!

Taylor admits in the interview that “as variety goes down, sales go down, too.” He’s not the only one to have noticed this correlation, which is why you’re hearing about retailers reconsidering reducing assortment.

It’s important, though, not to overlook Taylor’s bit of analysis on why sales went down. “Instead of thinking of this just as a cost puzzle,” he advises, “we need to bring the consumer into the picture.” (Maybe he's read this, this and this.)

Don't kill the golden goose

My observation is that retailers focused less on consumer choices and more on which manufacturers would give them the best deals. Buyers know that if you tell four brands you are only going to accept two of them, you'll start a negotiation where at least one of the winners reduces price.

The case for reducing confusion and streamlining store operations is a good one. If it’s strictly financially-driven, however, it won’t benefit anyone.

Listen to your audience, not your gut

One of the oldest criticisms of the advertising business is that its people are out of touch with its audiences. We hear this a lot because it's true.

Nature vs. Nurture

You may have read (here or here) about a recent Xyte Inc. study finding that most ad people are of a particular personality type that shapes the messages we produce.

Unfortunately, those messages don't connect as well with the other personality types that represent most consumers.

Blind Spots

The diagram above came from a colleague's presentation about social media. He was pointing out how most marketing people think iPhones are ubiquitous, while in reality they're not (yet).

iPhone penetration is such an easy thing to ascertain, so why would it be such a blind spot? Because we don't stop and look beyond our own experience.

Start with the basics

The implication is that we have to work extra hard to understand our consumers. Recently we've posted about empathy toward consumers (here and here), which takes sustained effort.

Start by using your iPhone to your advantage. Look up some basic data, such as the average weekly grocery budget in a typical household. (Some people say it can be $20.)

Make it a habit

Don't stop with one statistic, though. Work hard to get a feel for what your audience is really like. Listen to them every opportunity you get.

Regardless of your personality type, building a relationship with someone takes time and effort. If we treat our audiences this way, our messages will be relevant and our work better.

Focus Group Bingo

Recently we held some focus groups with the aware/non-triers of a consumer product.

I love focus groups because you can listen to consumers talk about your product, your category, or your ads.

I hate focus groups for the same reason. Some people listen to consumers and quickly draw a pre-conceived conclusion.

Listen up

This hazard makes listening all the more important. You spend thousands of dollars renting a facility, hiring a moderator, writing the questionnaire, recruiting the consumers, preparing the stimulus. You want to get the most out of the investment. Knowing what people say is critical. So turn off the distractions and pay attention.

Focus Group Bingo

A fun way to stay engaged is play focus group bingo. Before you get to the facility, make a grid like the one pictured above and populate it with terms you might expect consumers to say. These could include a product benefit or feature, a brand name, a competitor, and ad, or an annoying, oft-repeated phrase (like "that’s how we roll").

When a consumer utters one of the phrases, place an M&M candy on that square. Most focus group facilities have a good supply of M&Ms.

Not exactly a new idea….

Apparently there’s a company that actually offers a focus group bingo board. See it here. Their idea is based on the obligatory getting-to-know-you chit-chat that starts almost every focus group.

What’s on your Focus Group Bingo board?

Please suggest your favorite terms for focus group bingo in the comments section below.

comScore makes another move into TV territory

Last month we posted about comScore acquiring ARS, the iconic TV copy test company.

Last week comScore hired former Arbitron exec Joan FitzGerald as VP-television sales and business development. That's not about testing TV creative, it's about who watches what on TV.

You can also read this article from AdAge.com.

The Moment of Truth

We're going to market right now with an integrated program. Last year the client hired us, and together we defined objectives, wrote a strategy and developed creative for a channel-neutral plan. Regular readers know I work for an agency with many capabilities under one roof, and this program shows what all we can do. None of that really matters, however.

What does matter: In-market results.

This past week I had two parallel conversations about cold, hard measurement and accountability. One was in the comment sections of some online articles about the rise of measurement in modern marketing. It seemed that many people didn't understand the difference between (a) financial metrics like a P&L, (b) planning metrics like copy testing, and (c) performance metrics like sales, share and ROI.

My clients aren't confused. The other conversation this week took place in their boardroom where we updated the CEO on our program. Financials? Check. Research? Check. Then: Are you going to hit the sales objective? That's what matters to them. In-market results.

It should matter to us all

We would all do well to embrace this most important moment of truth. Modern marketing offers us analytical tools to measure progress and figure out how to drive sales more effectively.

Dismissing these tools as the stuff of bean counters and copy testers is short-sighted and wrong. In-market results are the very reason we write strategies, channel plans and creative.

comScore acquires ARS

Last week comScore announced its acquisition of ARSGroup, combining two well-known names in the measurement of advertising messages. You can read the basic news story here.

This is not a routine merger of two companies that offer the same services. ARS is known mainly for pre-testing of TV commercials, often in the form of animatics, while comScore is "the global source of digital market intelligence and the most preferred measurement service".

Naturally, much will be made about the new media testing company taking over the company that for decades has served Ye Olde Marketing.

There's another way to look at it, however. ARS is used mainly for measuring advertising before it is produced and goes on the air, where comScore focuses on consumer behavior in the market. More than the emergence of digital media, this signals the emergence of measurement and accountability.

By the way, the newly-merged partners wasted no time working together. Take a look at this post on comScore's blog written by an executive from ARS.

This is a development worth watching.

The world is spinning out of control...

This blog embraces the changes and challenges of modern marketing, which are legion. Here are two quick ones from the past 24 hours of marketing news.

DVR time-shifting. This article on AdAge.com reports a new study on which shows are the most "time-shifted", thanks to DVRs ("TiVo" to some of us). The study from Horizon Media counted eleven shows that are regularly watched up to seven days after they air.

Radio ratings. This morning's NYTimes.com reports that Nielsen's new Portable People Meters bring new accuracy to radio ratings. The author seems very interested in the findings that adult men listen to Celine Dion and that classical radio fans are a bit hypocritical.

These aren't just changes in technology, they are changes in how we measure the effectiveness of what we do.

TV is a popular medium, but how does it drive sales?

Yesterday Deloitte released a new study finding that TV is the most popular medium in the U.S., with 34% saying so, an increase from last year. The Internet came in second. (You can download the study here.) This is a timely follow-up to the previous post and discussion about TV's popularity among teenagers.

Speaking of research, we spent the morning yesterday reviewing the latest copy test results for a long-running TV campaign. It was a fun meeting because we scored incredibly well, giving us confidence for the day when we unleash this advertising on the marketplace.

The most successful TV commercials leave the consumer able to do two things. (1) Recall the brand name along with the commercial itself. (2) Retell the story line along with the product itself.

Many will tell you that TV advertising should inform, entertain, incite, et cetera, and those are all true depending on exactly what you sell. None of them matter, though, unless the audience remembers the brand name and understands the product being sold. (It helps if you are selling something relevant to the audience, but that's a story for another day.)