Indiantelevision.com Team

(5 November 2007 8:00 pm)

MUMBAI:Advertising Rating Company (ARC) has introduced Advertising Analyser to measure the advertisements and rate their creativity and effectiveness versus just how many folks are watching.

Through ARC's survey metrics process, data is gathered based on universal criteria and filtered to create ACE (Advertising Creative Effectiveness) Scores. These ACE Scores provide advertisers with a scorecard of the effectiveness of their advertisements.

To showcase the example of their survey metrics system, ARC asked 8,724 randomly selected consumers ranging in age from 18 to 64, "What would make you stay with the channel, as opposed to switching to another channel, during commercial breaks?"

According to ARC president and CEO Steve Goldman, the survey was designed to provide consumer insight into the issues of viewer drop-off during commercial breaks and provide networks with ideas for the solution.

"We found the most effective way to keep viewers during commercial breaks appears to be very simple. Show commercials that viewers want to watch," said Goldman.

For example, 80 per cent of the survey respondents said if commercials were funny, they would not switch to another channel. It suggests that networks are losing viewers during commercial breaks because consumers do not feel that there are enough commercials worth watching. Consumers do not categorically reject all commercial viewing; they simply refuse to watch boring/annoying commercials.

In terms of content, commercials they like to watch are similar to TV programs they like to watch: funny 80 per cent, followed by simple, good entertainment 52 per cent, a great story 30 per cent and thought-provoking content 28 per cent.

Viewer retention during commercial breaks seems to be also a function of commercial break programming. In other words, networks could retain more viewers if they programmed their commercial breaks better and more effectively. For example, many respondents said that they would stay with the channel if a commercial break were mixed with useful information such as local weather reports, breaking news or how-to-tips.

Although this survey highlighted viewers' feelings about what would make them watch commercials, Advertising Rating Company's system is designed to rate the effectiveness of commercials as a tool to help advertisers judge the efficacy of their advertising.