As the Senior Analyst of Advertising, Media and Internet at Wall Street equity research house Pivotal Research Group, Brian Wieser has gained a strongly positive reputation as a straight-shooter who provides some of the cleanest visibility on the state of broadcast media in the U.S.
That’s why the broadcast TV industry’s C-Suite should be a tad anxious about Wieser’s analysis of trends tied to the use of TV alongside commercial share for the calendar month of May 2017.
Wieser gave his monthly check-up on the TV industry as Pivotal defines it.
What’s his prognosis?
“Total use of television as we define it across all sources of content inputs was down again, by 6.2% on a total-day basis for adults 18-49 during May,” he said.
But, this drop was “only” 2.8% among all households.
As a result, Wieser finds that national TV commercial impressions delivered among adults 18-49 fell 9.2% in May 2017, compared to May 2016, on a total-day basis.
Concurrently, consumption via internet-connected devices, including Roku, Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast rose by 51% year-over-year to account for 10.8% of total TV use among adults 18- 49 on a total-day basis.
This compares to 6.8% in May 2016, and 3.8% in May 2015.
COMMERCIAL LOADS ROCK STEADY
Despite the steep drop in TV commercial impressions in a key viewer demographic in May ’17, national commercial loads that qualified for C3/C7 ratings (these exclude unencoded or otherwise non-qualifying activity in digital environments) across the industry were stable, at 10.9 minutes per hour across all Nielsen-tracked programming during May 2017 compared to the year-ago period.
Viacom produced the largest share of C3-qualifying commercial impressions during May, with a 15.8% share of adults 18-49 among national media owners.
News networks Fox News, MSNBC and CNN were among the leading individual networks during the quarter.
But, Wieser’s overall conclusion is that advertisers aren’t getting the ROI they should be getting from their investment in national TV spots during the month of May.
“Overall, the industry-level results are negative for ad-supported national TV as a medium,” he says.
Total day and prime-time viewing of traditional TV programming among adults 18-49 fell by double digits again, while internet-connected-device-based viewing – most of which is not ad-supported – rose by around 50% year-over-year.
“Viewing of premium video on PCs, tablets and mobile phones are undoubtedly accounting for some of these declines (and reported viewing might even grow if related data were included in standard measures of viewership),” Wieser notes. “However, it doesn’t seem likely that this data will be included in any comprehensive industry-wide total audience metric any time soon, aside from individual networks such as CBS supporting Nielsen’s related initiative.”
Wieser then turned venomous against the TV industry, concluding, “We continue to believe in our maxim that television is the worst form of advertising except all those others which have been tried, at least for those advertisers focused on awareness-based media goals, and budgets are generally unaffected by changes in ratings in the short-term. Unfortunately, sentiment toward the medium worsens as commonly reported or relied-upon measures such as adults 18-49 fall, especially by the significant levels observed recently. Negative sentiment ultimately leads to advertisers’ efforts to explore and encourage the use of alternative media vehicles, or otherwise establish marketing goals that are not necessarily awareness-driven.”
