Cable Television

The Cable Television Network Service provides commercial occurrences and expenditure information for 118 cable television signals. Cable Television is monitored via satellite 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

West Coast satellite feeds of several networks are monitored to identify unique ad occurrences not appearing in the East Coast feeds. Expenditure estimates and ratings are not reported for this activity.

Cable Network Listing (pdf)

Expenditure Data

Effective with January 2018 data, expenditures for national Cable TV advertising are primarily derived from data obtained through the SQAD NETCOSTS system. Vivvix receives a monthly report detailing the average cost of a 30-second spot broken out by network, daypart, program category and program subcategory. The report is based on actual spot purchases made by NETCOST contributors and reflects negotiated costs, the actual weighting of upfront and scatter buys, and the incidence of no-charge spots.

Vivvix supplements NETCOSTS data with program costs provided by contributing cable networks. These additional inputs are used to transform program sub-category costs from NETCOSTS into modeled estimates of specific program costs.

Prior to January 2018, national Cable TV expenditures were derived from 30-second cost information supplied by contributing cable networks whenever possible. In the absence of network-supplied ad cost, program-level cost information from contributing media agencies was used. Spot cost information was supplemented by advertising revenue data from industry sources (Caution: Expenditure estimates produced by these two methodologies are not directly comparable, thus causing trending disruption).

Vivvix normally applies a single average cost to all telecasts of a program during a given month. Source data sometimes indicates special costs for certain program telecasts or commercial pods within a program. Under these circumstances Vivvix may apply specific costs to the ad occurrences in the designated telecasts or pods.

The calculated 30-second cost is initially applied to each commercial occurrence. For commercials longer or shorter than 30 seconds, a conversion factor is then applied to arrive at the reported dollar value for the occurrence. The factors used are:

Spot Length (seconds) less than 20, 20-40, 41-50, 51-75, 76-105, greater than 105

Factor 0.50, 1.00, 1.50, 2.00, 3.00, (length/30)

From January 2018 onward, direct response ad occurrences initially receive the same 30-second cost and spot-length conversion factor as indicated above and then are reduced by 50 percent. Prior to 2018, the 50 percent reduction was not applied.

Ratings Sources

Vivvix takes audience ratings and impression data from Nielsen and overlays these onto commercial occurrence activity for all monitored networks that are reported by Nielsen. “Program Ratings” and “Commercial Ratings” are reported separately.

A. Program Ratings

Time period ratings are used and assigned to the specific time of an ad occurrence. If Nielsen reports audiences for a specific telecast, these will be assigned to the occurrences in that specific telecast. If Nielsen reporting is a multi-day or multi-week average, these audience estimates will be applied to all occurrences in the multiple, corresponding time periods.

If a commercial airs on the quarter-hour, the audiences for the two adjacent quarter-hours will be averaged. A commercial is considered to air “on the quarter-hour” if it airs between :58-:02 or :14-:16 or :28-:32 or :44-:46 of the clock hour.

Ratings are based on a denominator of Total US population, not cable coverage area.

Program Ratings reflect time-shifted viewing. The following time-shifted ratings streams are available for Program Ratings: Live, Live Plus Same Day, and Live Plus Seven Days.

B. Commercial Ratings

Nielsen reports ‘average commercial minute’ ratings (ACM) that reflect the average audience during the subset of program minutes containing paid ad time.

Vivvix overlays ACM ratings for cable network programming onto commercial occurrence activity. These ACM ratings reflect a combination of program and daypart activity.

If a program airs multiple times in a single day, one ACM rating is assigned to all airings of the program using an average of the dayparts in which the program aired. All occurrences within the multiple telecasts will receive the same ACM rating.

If a program airs exactly one time in a single day, the assigned ACM rating reflects the audience to that specific telecast. For time intervals where Nielsen has provided no ACM ratings, an average of the full day is used.

The Cable ACM methodology was developed to provide the most accurate and complete picture of commercial audience within cable programming. It neutralizes potential errors associated with program title mapping as well as providing a solution to the problem of gaps in Nielsen ratings data.

The following dayparts are used to calculate and assign Cable ACM ratings:

The following time-shifted ratings streams are available for Commercial Ratings: