Ray, nice article.  I have posted on MP many time about placing sweepstakes and contests on Sweepstakestoday.com. In 23 years, I would prefer to earn revenue from this form over programatic. I have several major brands who I work with directly on their sweeps and expect more in the near future. The bigger problem is some of the agencies don't want direct buying desk anymore and would prefer to spend $5,000 to $10,000 on a PR agency. They can work with me for a small faction of the price. I receive somewhere up to ten PR agencies per week asking for me to place their offers. When I ask for money, they say we don't have the budget. What a joke. I am sure thei clients would choke on that joke if they heard from me directly.

The point is, my search engine for sweeps is far superior to Google and the AI programs because we micro target on one category. I plan on building mutilple micro search engines based on all new programming so the Columbia Journalism Review and others can build their hand places ads.

Ai, of course, would not have made the spelling error I did in prior comment.
Well said!

Well sid. Well asked.
Good one Gord !

To add to it also, it's driving people to use the easiest Media to claim it works sort of like going back to the old last click attribution fiasco's

Add historically, I agree with you. But I point out that they should be paying even more attention to the various online/social media as those are an ever larger part of their budget and are less and less Transparent as the years go by. Further, there are more and more folks claiming they're proving they're doing a good job but merely confusing coincidence and causality. it gets into a lot of grading your own homework, which is making the problems deeper.

"It is a brand that is already well-known for its revelatory journalism that breaks news, exposes wrongdoing, widens public understanding and forces accountability from every institution and every center of power."
60 Minutes hasn't been any of those things for the past three or four decades.

TAG, TAG TrustNet, and our partners at Fiducia are proud to power the latest ANA programmatic transparency benchmark report. One note from Joe's excellent coverage here, while we did create and define the new(ish) KPI known as TrueKPI/TrueCPM/TrueAdSpend, it is not considered proprietary. Just the opposite, we welcome everyone to learn more and continue to trade upon this framework. Learn more - https://www.tagtrust.net/.

The destruction is the goal not a mistake. 

In 2013, I started work on an exploratory project with the "old" Rentrak making use of their viewing data.  It turned out quite enlightening, and was sorry it wasn't pursued further.

Thanks, Jon. What I recalled mostly was the national TV aspect as this seemed to raise the largest concerns. That's what I referred to in my respnsse--that advertisers are being more careful re national TV and not as much the other media venues. Any thoughts on that?

Actually, Ed, some of the examples that were in that original presentation a decade ago included out of home because we had some contracts from that, social media and other online media because a lot of folks gave us quotes and shared paperwork there. Basically it covered all media as we had examples from each medium. And the work that K2 did blew out the stuff that I shared to a far greater degree and across everything. The work the ANA had done previous to my presentation, that presentation, and the K2 report showed it was pervasive across all media.

Joe, I think that Jon did a very brave thing ten years ago and I applaud him for it. However, unless I'm mistaken, Jon exposed bad practises of this nature only as they applied to national TV buys. It's my understanding that in this area, at least, advertisers have for the most part, taken most of the right steps. What is happening in other areas is another matter--but it's difficult to tell from the generalized findings reported.Just out of curiosity, I wonder if the survey explored the various media types--digital and traditional--and obtained a reading for each, individually?

Josh & Joe:  Let's make this happen!  Have alerted Scott McDonald at ARF. 

Tony, I was thinking that same thing. 

Andy was not only a titan of the media research business globally, he shared his deep knowledge and insights willingly and in the clearest manner with us all to the very end. I shalll be forever be grateful for his counsel over the years.  
While British and an avid Arsenal fan (I will forgive him!), I would respectfully suggest that ARF considers postumously awarding Andy the "Erwin Ephron Demystification Award" which I was proud to help institute.  I believe his fellow "titan", Erwin, would be more than delighted.

Andy was wise, knowledgeable, and kind. I don't know anyone who knew Andy and didn't like him. A tragic loss for our industry, and for everyone who knew him. I miss him already. 

Ummm Gutfeld? #1 3m nightly 

The converse also applies.   

Everyone employed by media, including the late nite comedians, has a moral obligation not to normalize Trump.

I'll be watching The World Cup and cheering on team USA and others as well. And USA will get the ratings for the 3 group matches. USA, USA, USA.

The WB was on WGN Superstation 1995-1999 when that ended The WB had no choice but sign with WZPX in West Michigan which was on a 22-hour delay 1999-2006 since it was a PAX/I Suck Network which should've been a WB station full-time in my opinion.

UPN LIN TV aired some of shows on WOOD TV & WOTV on weekends in the mid 90s and WZPX when they launched as a PAX station aired UPN in 1998-99 season from 11PM to 1AM and LIN TV decided to make their low-power TV station WXSP into UPN which went with UPN because of airing sports as they aired, the Detroit pro teams Tigers, Redwings, Pistons and some local GR teams as well. Which those that liked Buffy were always upset that Buffy wasn't aired due to Wings & Pistons games.

With Subchannels being new in the mid 2000s when UPN & The WB merger in 2006 in West Michigan The CW was one of the few markets that didn't sign with either UPN or The WB WZPX was out they weren't going to get The CW which I thought would be WXSP but sports was a big reason why The CW passed and decided to sign with WWMT DT2 that got The CW from 2006-2024 was West Michigan CW when it signed on but went with CW7 since that was where cable put it on which Charter Spectrum put it on channel 7 where WZPX was and was moved to channel 14. When Nexstar bought The CW and took it in West Michigan was surprised that they didn't put it on WXSP and went with WOTV DT2 which is channel 6 on Charter Spectrum dropping a spot to channel 6 from 7. They call it The CW West Michigan.

Well said Ed & Dave.

Dave, I must say, this is very confusing. 

You mentioned Nielsen's The Gauge Reports showing that local broadcast viewing has held up well compared to cable---but much of the "broadcast" viewing reported in The Gauge is to either national broadcast network or nationally syndicated fare--not content, like local news,  which is created by each station. 

Also, national advertisers are not heavy users of local TV--either syndicated shows or  news, sports, etc. There was a time when this was not so, but over the past thirty years local ad spend on TV stations has far surpassed what comes from national advertisers. 

It should also be noted that "spot cable" --well targeted buys sold by local cable interconnects in most markets--has become a major competitor to the stations. Latest estimates have it garnering about $5-6 billion annually. The spot cable advertiser--again mostly local or regional advertisers----can target consumers with fine geographic splits as well as by selecting which national cable channels to associate with in ad placement. 

Re Jack's point about the WB using cable to gain coverage, I write about this in my new book , "TV Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow" ( It's on Amazon, folks ) , and what happened was that after Fox launched its independent station based fourth network, the other studios became alarmed that they were being shut out of venues for their own TV shows, so Paramount and Warner Brothers both raced to sign up the best indie stations that were left. Paramount's UPN won that battle, garnering over 80 stations, leaving The WB with less than 50. So, as Jack said, it came up with a creative solution and filled in using local cable systems. 

What I don't get is how a local TV station can pair up with a national cable channel to offer advertisers great targeting opportunities. Even if a TV station group tried this, it would find that the audience it controls in its most common locally produced content--news-- was mostly old adults and its CPMs were considerably higher than what the national cable guys were getting. Worse, national advertisers who do not have meaningful local market strategies wouldn't know how to exploit the city by city selectivity inherent insuch a combination. As for those that do have such strategies why not simply buy time on the cable interconnects and any stations that offer a good deal? 

So, as I said, I'm confused by this one, Dave. Help!

"It was that he was so focused on keeping the light on Trump's flaws and antics that it reminded us we still live in an America where someone can do that. Until last night."

Late night TV's creation and intention was to entertain people before they zonked out for the night.  Leave the office and politics and troubles behind - you tuned in to get a few laughs and be entertained.  Nobody was tuning in to hear some schmuchk give his take on "keeping the light" on the President's perceived flaws. That's what the news networks have devolved to 24/7.

Admittedly, I was a fan of Colbert when he was on Comedy Central.  I was genuinely excited when he went to Late Nite.  After watching him for a month or so, I tuned out as I was incredibly disappointed that he was so partisan and so predictible so quickly.  I was tuning in to be entertained.  He wasn't entertaining. He wasn't offering an escape from the noise - he was amplifying it.

Colbert was not, and is not, unique.  He's just one of many fighting for a decreasing piece of pie of people who somehow want to relish in rage.

What's he going to do next?

He's going to follow the path of Como, Lemon, Joy Reid, etc.  He's going to have a YouTube channel that will launch to great fanfare and his views and following will falter without a machine like CBS to promote his repetitive, unoriginal dribble. 

It's not satire.  It's not sophisticated. It's certainly not original.

It's just repetitive, infantile babble - and the irony is it's not much different than Trump himself.  

Now that is funny.