Francis, that's a great question. You are clearly a towering intelect. Please do provide a link or source for you're wisdom. Fox News doens't count. 

Posibly we need to review this private taxpayer contribution to U.S. interests in light of the Biden administration's US government funding of gender change operations on people in  foreign country prisions. Who voted for it, who signed the checks and what was the benefit to US taxpayers?  

Interesting move by Reddit — longer-form video is clearly where engagement is heading. We have been building in this space too with VidRush AI (https://vidrushai.com/), an AI long video generator that combines images, video, audio and text for controllable, production-ready output. The :15 view goal makes sense as a middle ground between 6s bumpers and full long-form. Curious to see how the split testing data shakes out for advertisers here.

Dave when the programmatic guys decided to invade the TV market about 15 years ago they made grandiose claims about attaining undreamof trgeting efficiencies, no more daypart buying, etc. and they failed dismaly for a variety of reasons. 

1) TV time buyers didn't have to deal with millions of sellers at a time.

2) The programmatic system's buying, data chomping,  and transmitting fees were absurdly  high

3) Most Tv sellers had no intention of allowing computers to engage in bidding systems to sell their time. TV wasn't eBay.

4)The targeting mechanisms were set usage based and very faulty. 

5) Most advertisers weren't deciding on their TV buys only on CPMs

6) The programmatic systems couldn't account for reach so they would pile up impressions on the low CPM sellers and mostly in the non-prime hours.

Now we have agentic buying which is just a more flexible version of programmatic--with most of the same faults.

When Irwin Gotlieb says that he bought programmatically for years at all of those agencies, I don't think that he means programmatic as currently constituted.  

Spot on Friank, not only do AI and agentic not automatically create transparency, the increase in speed and complexity of systems mean that they are likely to automatically create less transparency.

I'm already tired of political ads and 2 months to ago until it's over UGH. Perry Johnson in the GOP primary went after John James on Data Centers but Perry Johnson lost in the primary. This is the 3RD time that John James is running for state wide in Michigan lost twice for US Senate almost won in 2020, and is now running for governor, was a congressman from 2023-27.

Dave, I agree. AI and agentic systems will make media buying faster and smarter, but speed and automation don't automatically create transparency. The more authority we give autonomous systems to make decisions and to move ad dollars, the more important independent verification becomes. AI can make decisions, but in no way should authenticate its own performance. 

Hi Ed - 

I appreciate the feedback always.

Due to the use of current technologies that are on par with the consumer experience, our proprietary technology has significant cost effiencies when compared to historical options. 

P&G is a customer of ours. The day that advertisers want to and can understand this type of granular human behavior is here! 

Joanna 

The problem, Johanna is that the ones who control the "audience" surveys are the sellers, not the buyers and certainly not the advertisers. That's because the sellers do 75-80% of the fnding for the audience surveys and the latter, being businesses, are unduely influenced by them. And sellers always want the biggest numbers.

Take the question of TV/streaming viewing for example. What we are getting--and will be getting for the forceable future are vastly inflated device usage numbers that far overstate the incidence of commercial viewing--yet these will used by buyers and advertisers to determine  --or approximate--the  reach/frequency of their linearTV/streaming campaigns. But, at least we have a independent third party source for such data--Nielsen---with a fair degree of  standardized consistency. 

When you deal with You Tube or social media all of that disappears and the seller decides what information to give you. 

I don't see a time coming when we can seriously expect advertisers to foot the bill for TV/video audience surveys at scale- and certainly not for platforms like mobile----but at the very least they--or at least the leading companies--- could become more pro active and not only require their agencies to do so  but also help them with some funding. TVision has demonstrated that it can be done--actually observed viewing---but so far the sellers have blocked its application on a universal basis across all sellers covering all programs with a large enough panel. 

I don't like it at all as I live in a Scripps market as they own WXMI FOX17 in West Michigan. As I prefer the anchor talking about the next story with the reporter as well, 268 cuts came to the FOX17 newsroom as a morning anchor got the pink slip and Scripps didn't renew with the cheif met Kevin Graig as he knew back in May they weren't going to renew him and Aug, 4 was his last day.

Sep, 14 FOX17 will add more news err more crappy Scrippscast 4:30AM to 10AM which couple of years ago dropped it to 5AM, doing news at Noon did a midday at 11AM when it was a Tribune station Scripps axed it a couple of years ago, and going 3 & half hours 4PM to 7:30PM which I have a feeling that final half will be anchorless that's kinda how I feel when tuning inti any FOX17 newscast which I only watch for weather.

Why does Adam Sysom E.W. Scripps CEO still have a job? he has run it into the ground and I see Scripps will be up for sale with all these cuts in my opinion. I agree with Ed and what he said.   

Joe &Jack, in fairness to Nielsen, it has in the past published free to all, many very useful and far more dtailed reports on media usage than The Gauge. For example Nielsen used to publish quarterly and later annual  reports  defining the reach and time spent by age groups not only for linear TV but also for smartphones, desktop PCs and tablets. They were called "Total Audience Reports" and I am icluding a link--if it takes- to a listing from 2021 for such a report.

If vyou go to Nielsen's website under "Insights" and under it, "Reports", and go back in tme you may be surprised. 

As for The Gauge producing wildly inflated streaming fantasy numbers, I suspect that the new ones--based on DASH universe estimates --will be only slightly different--but somewhat lower for streaming--not that any media decisions are being made based on such information. They aren't.

Link:

https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2021/total-audience-advertising-across-todays-media/

I agree that it is unwise for The Guage to be based on data that differ from Nielsen's best estimates. 

@Jack Wakshlag: Which explains why the Guage is publishing fantasy research showing huge gains and viewing to digital alternatives (YouTube, streamers), at least if you believe the ARF's DASH estimates vs. Nielsen's Gauge so far.

A bit of history. First, to answer your question, Nielsen is marketing for themselves.  When faced with competitors and analysts (you might remember Josh Bernoff and his fantasy research at Forrester) offering a perspective showing huge gains and viewing to digital alternatives, Susan Whiting realized others were doing a job her company could do better, and should.  She decided to stop ceding PR turf to these folks. Before that, Nielsen released little more than program rankings.  So the Guage was born, managed so well by Brian Fuhrer for these many years. 

Wayne, what you are describing, if carried through on a massive basis by many stations and station groups, will sound the death knell for local TV news. While I understand the need to cut costs, it's an established fact--based on TV's long history--that hard core fans of a given newscast--10-20% who account for half or more of its average day audience--bond with the anchors and key reporters and that, not so much, the news, is why they watch. Take this linkage away and you are simply winding down your news function--like a dying brand--by spending less on it. 

A better solution is to cut back on the amount of time you dvote to news and use otherr, cheaper, forms of content to fill those vacated spaces--probably via syndicated shows.  Don't remove the personal equation from your news reporting; just cut the amout of redindancy.

I liked The Dog Stars was a pretty good movie maybe could become a cult classic. See it if you seen most movies out this summer.

Wayne, they said that 74% of all homes are "pay TV" homes per your report. Doesn't that figure seem rather high?

Strong performance is hard to achieve when not leveraging deterministic people-based identity solutions as the foundational piece.  An email, 3P coookie, or a device ID doesn't accurately represent a unique person.  OpenAI and most other companies struggle with this.

Dave, that's true about the "transparancy" in traditional media audience surveys. However there is a difference when it comes to TV, it seems. For example, when DVRs appeared it was feared by the sellers that Nielsen's "live" ratings would decline due to delayed viewing. Meanwhile the buyers were pushing for the reporting to switch to commercial minutes from all-content minutes. So both sides cut a deal and got Nielsen to switch to C-3 reporting, while at the same time shitfing to commercial minute ratings. Result: the ratings didn't change and nobody's boat was rocked. 

More recently Nielsen has changed its definition of what constitues a quarter rating for local radio and TV. The result is  significantly higher quarter hour ratings for the stations to use as "currency" --even though many of the people counted as "reached" will have tuned out--or to other stations--- and can't watch the advertiser's commercial. Are the time buyers up in arms over this? Nope. Not a peep. In my days at BBDO, we and the other agencies would not have allowed this kind of manipulation. 

So what we are getting is increasing seller control of TV and now radio  data  repotring, with the buyers going along with it as an accomodation with the sellers. Sure, the buyers can make correctivve "adjustments" in the data--but how many  bother ---or know how to do it?

Ed, by no means am I suggesting that Nielsen, MRI, Arbitrton are cooking numbers and being paid. If you read Bryon and my comments, it is the opporssite. Digital ad verification and "proof" companies have significant intermingled economics with the owners and sellers of that inventory, which is why most of them make the majority of the economics selling optimization, not verification. Legacy media measurement companies may not make everyone happy, but their operations and economic interests are very transparent.

Guys, just to be clear, I don't think that anyone has seriously  accused Nielsen, MRI or, previously, Arbitron for radio, of cooking the numbers to falsly inflate them. Instead, the pressure by the media sellers is mostly applied on the methodology side as it is known that certain types of measurements produce bigger--or smaller--- numbers for ealmost everyone. So those that generate bigger numbers are supported; the others are not. 

In addition, the media sellers often influence the kinds of data that are made readily available. Hence, in TV and radio, most reports do not show the findings by income or education as some sellers would not fare as well on such metrics. The data is available--but you must be a subscriber to dig it out. 

Bryon, yes. You hit on the key point. There is little "indepdendence" when the companies being measured, particularly in more custom ways, are also largest funders of that measurment. It has been decades since those who buy advertising have also shown a willingness to take responsibility for making sure that there is true independence in its measurement, even if it means helping pay for that measurement system.

Dave, independent measurement survives outside television, but mostly in legacy media and limited forms of digital verification. The harder question is how independent a measurement system can be when the companies being measured are also its largest funders. At Hulu, we pushed for Nielsen to measure impression-based, on-demand video on its own terms, while many companies had strong incentives to preserve the existing currency. The resulting gap was filled by platform self-reporting, which was a worse outcome.