Spot Television

Vivvix’s Spot Television Service provides commercial occurrence and expenditure information for more than 950 English speaking stations and 100 Spanish speaking stations in 210 major markets. As of January 22nd, 2024, Spot Television is monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The monitored stations constitute the principal stations in each market and typically include the network affiliates, major independents, and Spanish affiliates. Public Broadcasting stations are not monitored.

Vivvix reports commercial occurrence activity as monitored. Atypical situations, of which Vivvix is aware, may be reported differently. Vivvix will not assign activity aired on one station to another station in cases where the second station buys the time slot and sells the spots. However, adjustments may be made to expenditures when a program or slot of time is simulcast. If this is a permanent arrangement, the units will be reported on both stations, but expenditures will be reported only for the primary station.

Network, Spanish Language Network, and Nationally Syndicated spots that air in the local markets are removed from the Spot TV medium.
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When affiliations change, only the current affiliation will be stored in the detail and summary records within the database, therefore, all reports will only show the current affiliation.

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Effective with January 2025 data, expenditures for Spot TV advertising are primarily derived from data obtained through the Guideline MEDIACOSTS system. Vivvix receives quarterly reports detailing the average cost of a 30-second spot broken out by market and daypart. The reports are based on actual spot purchases made by MEDIACOSTS contributors and reflect negotiated costs.

Vivvix supplements MEDIACOSTS data with rate cards, declarative publisher data, and intelligence available in the public domain. These additional inputs are blended with the MEDIACOSTS data in a proprietary model to produce an average 30-second cost for each property and daypart.

Prior to January 2025, Spot TV expenditures were derived from 30-second cost information supplied by contributing television stations, rep firms, and agency sources. Spot cost information was supplemented by industry spot revenue patterns as defined in a survey conducted monthly by the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB).

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. Under these circumstances Vivvix may apply specific costs to the ad occurrences in the designated telecasts.
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Vivvix collects both local & network commercials aired on broadcast network affiliates and does not distinguish between them. Broadcast network spots are identified and flagged by comparing brands advertised during network programs on the local affiliate to brands advertised over the network feeds. The broadcast network spots are given the market unadjusted Spot TV costs and then when the network costs are available, they are prorated based on the markets % of TV HH.

Please note – The scope of our coverage does not include identification of local affiliate clearances on digital multicast networks within Spot TV markets and is limited to national clearances reported as part of Vivvix’s Network TV service.
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Data is collected via the Spot Television service. Automated software processes compare commercial activity within Syndicated programs across Spot TV markets. These processes identify matching commercials in the same pod positions. This information is then reviewed and edited.

Known Syndicated programs are identified as such in Vivvix's database. New Syndicated programs are identified in program title data purchased from a third-party vendor. Additionally, Vivvix contacts Syndicators for more detailed information when needed. Barter spots are given a local daypart cost.

This technology accurately identifies actual air dates and times of Syndicated programs in the Spot Television markets.
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Brand/products that can be purchased in a market are made valid for that market. Activity that is appearing in markets for which the brand/product is not valid are reviewed. These brand/products are checked to determine whether the market validity should be updated, or the brand/product should be reclassified.
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Many advertisers are using ‘shared creative’ executions. The following is an example of a shared creative: A law office in New York uses the same creative execution as a law office in Los Angeles. The only distinguishing feature between the two advertisements is a brief tag (audio, video or both) containing the respective law office's name at the end of the spot.

Vivvix TV collection technology cannot always discern between commercials using shared creative executions that are tagged differently. When found, editors change a brand to UNKNOWN ADVERTISER because the brand reported couldn’t have aired in that market & the actual advertiser is unknown.

For example: If XYZ Attorneys, a Los Angeles law firm, ran an ad in Los Angeles it would be classified as XYZ Attorneys. If ZYX law firm in New York then used the same creative as XYZ but changed the tag on the end to their name, Vivvix auto-recognition technology may not recognize that the spot has been changed. ZYX's spot would be reported as XYZ Attorneys. XYZ Attorneys is an invalid brand for the New York market, thus our editors would change the brand to UNKNOWN ADVERTISER LAW OFFICE.
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Partial discovery markets report only those ad, promo & PSA campaigns that have been previously 'discovered' or 'recognized' in full discovery markets. Any unrecognized ad activity does not flow over to the classification process to be classified & reported as it does in full discovery markets.

Therefore, partial discovery markets tend to only report ad campaigns that are national or those that cover wide regions of the country, enabling the ability to track Nationally advertised products across all 210 markets monitored by Vivvix.

List of Full & Partial Discovery Markets
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Vivvix takes local market audience ratings and impression data from Nielsen’s NSI and NHSI services and overlays these onto commercial occurrence activity for all broadcast stations that are commonly measured by both Vivvix and Nielsen.

Effective with July 2018 reporting, ratings integration reflects changes made by Nielsen to its methodology and is based on:

Prior to July 2018, a single rating stream of Live Viewing + 7 Days was integrated with commercial occurrences. In addition, Nielsen’s reporting frequency per DMA previously ranged from four to twelve monthly reports per year. For markets with less than full-year audience measurement, Vivvix ‘filled in’ unmeasured months by applying ratings and impressions from an adjacent measured period.

If a commercial occurrence airs on the quarter-hour, the audience values before and after the quarter-hour are averaged. A commercial is considered on the quarter-hour if it airs within two minutes of the hour or half hour and one minute of the quarter or three-quarter-hour. For example, an occurrence airing at 9:29:00 pm receive an audience value that is the average of the 9:15-9:30 pm and 9:30-9:45 pm quarter-hours.

When Spot TV occurrence activity first becomes available in Vivvix products, preliminary ‘estimated’ ratings and impressions are assigned, based on the prior year. For example, October 2017 would be used to assign preliminary estimates for October 2018.

‘Final’ Spot TV ratings and impression for all markets are released monthly within Vivvix products after Nielsen has completed its reporting. ‘Final’ data replace the preliminary ‘estimated’ data.

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Television GRP values in Vivvix reports are calculated by summing target audience impressions and dividing by the population estimate for the same target audience. The impression and population values must be based on the same geographic market area. Clients can use this method to manually calculate GRPs.

If a report is run requesting data from 50 markets, for example, but data only occurs in 35 of those markets the GRP calculation will still be based on the population of the combined 50 markets.

For Spot TV GRP calculations across two or more DMAs, the numerator is the combined target audience impressions across the multiple DMAs and the denominator is the combined target audience population of the multiple DMAs.

For GRP calculations involving Spot TV in combination with any National TV media types (Network TV; Cable TV; Spanish Language Network; or Syndication), the proper denominator is Total U.S. population for the target audience.
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