Pivotal Research Group Senior Research Analyst of Advertising Brian Wieser is at it again, as Wall Street’s Wordsmith Watchdog has penned another report based on his analysis of trends associated with the use of TV along commercial share trends for U.S. media owners.
Wieser examined the calendar month of July 2017, and his prognosis isn’t so great for the TV industry.
As Pivotal defines it, total use of television was down by 4.3% on a total day basis for adults 18-49 during July; it was down by 2.8% among all households.
This was seen as national TV commercial impressions delivered among adults 18-49 fell 8.1% in June 2017, compared to June 2016, on a total-day basis.
Additionally, Wieser finds that national TV viewing on a live + 7 basis among people 2+ was down by less in July, falling 5.5% year-over-year.
Consumption via internet-connected devices, including Roku, Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast, rose by 43% year-over-year to account for 12.7% of total TV use among adults 18-49 on a total-day basis versus 8.5% in July 2016 and 4.9% in July 2015.
National commercial loads which qualified for C3/C7 ratings (which exclude unencoded or otherwise non-qualifying activity in digital environments) across the industry were 10.7 minutes per hour across all Nielsen-tracked programming, during July 2017 vs. 10.9 during July 2016.
Which company saw its networks produce the largest share of C3-qualifying commercial impressions during June? It was Viacom, with a 17.6% adults 18-49 commercial share among national media owners.
Comcast’s NBCUniversal produced the highest share of program viewing among people 2+ on a live + 7-day basis, with 14.9% of total program viewing.
Among network groups, the most significant negative commercial share change was Time Warner (down from 12.9% in July 2016 to 12.1% in July 2017), while the most significant positive share change was at Discovery (up to 7.8% in July 2017 from 7.4% in July 2016), Wieser notes.
“Overall, the industry-level results are negative for ad-supported national TV as a medium, consistent with observations from other months in 2017,” he writes. “Total day viewing of traditional TV programming among adults 18-49 fell by high single digits (-8.1%) although program viewing among all people on a live + 7 basis fared somewhat better (falling by 5.5%).”
Wieser adds that viewing of unrated programming through internet-connected devices and of premium video on PCs, tablets and mobile phones is “undoubtedly accounting for some of these declines, and probably would bring year-over-year trends to flat or possibly positive figures if related data were included in standard measures of viewership.” However, he adds, it is unlikely that this data will be included “in any comprehensive industry-wide total audience metric any time soon.”
So, Brian … tell us what you really think about TV advertising?
“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,” he opines. “Unfortunately, sentiment towards 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.”
“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.” — Brian Wieser, Pivotal Research Group
