• by David L. Smith , October 8, 2008

In the world of GRPs. comparability is key. GRPs have several functions. They are handy building blocks for planners. They make it possible for a brand or advertising person on the client side to have an idea about the relative gross impact of one medium or vehicle versus another. Because of this, it has always been important that GRPs for each medium be roughly comparable with other media, with the denominator being U.S. population or U.S. target audience population when talking about national media. The media industry learned this the hard way almost 30 years ago, when Nielsen permitted cable networks to use their own penetration as the denominator. The result was that no individual network cable rating was comparable to any other network's cable rating: a tower of Babel that resulted in a sub industry being created just to do post analyses of cable efforts.

Therefore, it is important as we launch new media to have a situation wherein GRPs reported for that medium are comparable to other media such as print and TV. Such is not the case for online video, the first of many new media that will be coming down the pike in the next few years. For Nielsen NetRatings, the denominator appears to be either Internet or Internet video penetration. For comScore, the default appears to be Internet population, with a planner/buyer option to change the default to U.S. population, much like comScore Web ratings.

The result is troubling. First of all, accepted industry standards should not have optional ways for reporting the data. If there are options, there is no standard. I have no problem with new metrics. Just don't use the same term that we used for a prior metric. (These are the people who misused the traditional media term reach for the Internet, which still causes problems). Secondly, you could have two vendors reporting out GRPs using comScore and they would not be comparable if each used a different population base. Thirdly, we have no assurance that there will be any kind of comparability between Nielsen and comScore data. A big enough problem as it is. And lastly, but equally important, Internet video GRPs will not be comparable to TV or cable GRPs. This means that you cannot combine the two efforts for reach and frequency calculations, or look at a flow chart and have some reasonable expectation that the numbers are "apples to apples."

This is a plea to comScore and Nielsen to fix this problem and get it right. We have enough problems with Internet metrics. We don't need another. And for those of you who want to give me your diatribe about GRPs being old-school, save your breath. You'll only look the fool. Especially if you try to do that while pitching a top 50 advertiser. Sure there are important metrics other than GRPs, but we have to start with exposure, which GRPs provide.