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Our Ratings, Ourselves

Posted by Zonk on from the deep-thought dept.

Ant writes "This long New York Times article (10 pages; no registration required) reports on the mismeasure of television (TV)." From the article: "One of the great contradictions of modern American life is that almost everyone watches TV while almost no one agrees anymore about what it really means to watch television....when it comes to figuring out how many of us are watching these shows, and whether we're paying attention while we're watching and even whether we're actually noticing the advertisements among the shows we may or may not be watching -- well, this is where things get tricky..."

4 of 475 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Free" TV is a terrible deal by Weirsbaski · · Score: 3, Informative

    Common CPM for TV ads is $10, meaning one cent per viewer. The network gets a penny to show you a 30 second ad. If you watch 5 hours of TV, you will see an hour of those ads, and they get $1.20.

    In other words, you get $1.20 worth of programming for watching an hour of advertising. $1.20 per hour is an illegal wage by a long margin in most places these days, and a terrible deal.

    By that logic, if networks upped their fee to 25 cents per ad per viewer (which amounts to $30 per hour of ads per viewer), then the deal automatically becomes a great one for viewers?

    --

    I am not a sig.
  2. YOU ARE THE PRODUCT by disposable60 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Never forget, YOU are the PRODUCT being sold to the advertisers. The shows are produced to maximize sales. Of you. To advertisers.

    --
    You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
  3. Re:Invisible advertising by timeOday · · Score: 3, Informative
    I found this thread interesting enough to look for some info, and I'm responding to what you wrote because it confirms what you said.

    This is not from some media critic, or academic, but from the "Cable TV Ad Beaureau":

    Our audience is deciding what they want. MTV's median age is exactly when a majority of young American adults begin to form life-long brand loyalties. Young adults 15-17 are excited consumers and extremely impressionable. Now is the time to influence their choices. 12-34 year olds have higher brand recall and more recognition than 35-49 year olds. In fact 69% make their purchasing decisions based on brand name, not price.
    In short, they're looking to build lifelong loyalties, and hitting up the demographic with the highest cash-to-brains ratio.
  4. Re:My experiences with advertising by spagetti_code · · Score: 3, Informative
    How do they do that?
    Its pretty cool. After a program is recorded, a process starts up that scans the video file for what looks like ads. I believe it detects these by finding slow fades to black, still pictures and logos appearing.

    When I get to watch a program (usually the next day, or a few days later), all the ads are gone.

    It does occasionally get it wrong, and for those occasions (or when I am watching it as its being recorded) I have the trusty skip-30 and back-5 buttons.