AIS is not allowed in Cinema
Advertising expenditure statistics Wemf will be soliciting customers for its Advertising Index Switzerland from September onwards - but for the time being there is no data at all for cinema and only global data for television.
Advertising expenditure statistics From September, Wemf will be courting customers for its Advertising Index Switzerland - but for the time being, there will be no data at all for cinema and only global data for television.The race between Wemf and Media Focus for the better advertising expenditure statistics is entering the decisive phase. After some delays in the timetable, Wemf presented the framework for its new Advertising Index Switzerland (AIS) last Tuesday.Unlike Media Focus (MF), AIS collects the invoiced gross expenditures. These are supplied directly by the participating media. AIS uses the same system as its competitors: newspapers, magazines, trade journals, TV, radio, billboards, teletext and online advertising are reported. Contrary to earlier announcements, however, the data is published monthly and not weekly.
The medium of cinema will be missed entirely. Hans-Jürg Gränicher, who heads the three-person team at Wemf, explains this blemish with "recording criteria that only take into account billed advertising placements, but not free space and free placements. Discussions with cinema marketers have shown this separation to be unworkable, he said. "One hope remains - should the cinema marketer Mediavision in western Switzerland give in after all, this could also persuade Cinecom to join in."
More serious than the absence of cinema, however, is the second flaw: In television, AIS will only show global data. This is in the categories "SRG stations," "Swiss advertising windows" and "Regional private stations. Data broken down to the individual stations is not available. Similar to cinema, the recording criteria would have led to this number blackout. "The problem lies with the Swiss advertising windows, which have a hard time disclosing their billed gross revenues," Gränicher explains.
Detailed data is missingFor media agencies and other industry players who want to use AIS, however, the lack of individual station data severely limits its utility. Urs Schneider, owner of the Zurich agency Mediaschneider AG, attaches importance to having the most detailed data possible for television, as has long been the case with MF. Schneider, on the other hand, can live well with the absence of cinema as a medium. "With advertising sales of only 35 to 40 million Swiss francs per year, this medium is marginal - unless you have a cigarette manufacturer as a customer."
While AIS is incomplete for TV and cinema, the new statistics for print media are all the more precise. All advertisements with a size of 500 mm or more, including the products advertised, are recorded. This also includes "jobs," "real estate," and "classified ads. These are each shown as a single total per title and day. Particularly important: AIS also records loose brochure inserts, which are only partially counted by MF, in addition to the bound inserts.
According to Gränicher, there will be a total of around 170 titles in the print media - at MF, there are almost twice as many at 331. The print titles were separated into A and B media according to their circulation, with the latter having second priority at AIS. "This procedure does not detract from the informative value of our statistics, because the 100 largest titles alone account for 85 percent of advertising spending. If you take the 150 biggest, you get 90 percent," says Gränicher.
The new online statistics will be fully usable in 2004 - including a comparison with the previous year. A test run together with publishers, media agencies and major advertising clients will start as early as July. Participants will be invited to provide assessments and make requests for changes. Together with this information, the statistics are to be given the finishing touches. Things will start getting serious in September - that's when AIS wants to ramp up customer advertising.
AIS earlier than Media FocusThe trump cards that AIS wants to play against Media Focus concern the acquisition quality in general (actual advertising effort per client), the price and the publication date of the data. The costs for clients would only be between 50 and 60 percent of what Media Focus charges, according to Gränicher. And: AIS is aiming for "the 15th of the following month" as the date for publishing the data - a few days earlier than Media Focus, which previously published around the 23rd of the following month. However, this is not a sustainable lead, as competitors are also working to move up their publication dates. "We want to be a good week faster," explains MF Managing Director Lukas Zihlmann. Nevertheless, Gränicher remains optimistic: "The statistics are new - so curiosity will certainly be high."
What moviegoers get to see in terms of advertising remains a mystery to media planners.
The medium of cinema will be missed entirely. Hans-Jürg Gränicher, who heads the three-person team at Wemf, explains this blemish with "recording criteria that only take into account billed advertising placements, but not free space and free placements. Discussions with cinema marketers have shown this separation to be unworkable, he said. "One hope remains - should the cinema marketer Mediavision in western Switzerland give in after all, this could also persuade Cinecom to join in."
More serious than the absence of cinema, however, is the second flaw: In television, AIS will only show global data. This is in the categories "SRG stations," "Swiss advertising windows" and "Regional private stations. Data broken down to the individual stations is not available. Similar to cinema, the recording criteria would have led to this number blackout. "The problem lies with the Swiss advertising windows, which have a hard time disclosing their billed gross revenues," Gränicher explains.
Detailed data is missingFor media agencies and other industry players who want to use AIS, however, the lack of individual station data severely limits its utility. Urs Schneider, owner of the Zurich agency Mediaschneider AG, attaches importance to having the most detailed data possible for television, as has long been the case with MF. Schneider, on the other hand, can live well with the absence of cinema as a medium. "With advertising sales of only 35 to 40 million Swiss francs per year, this medium is marginal - unless you have a cigarette manufacturer as a customer."
While AIS is incomplete for TV and cinema, the new statistics for print media are all the more precise. All advertisements with a size of 500 mm or more, including the products advertised, are recorded. This also includes "jobs," "real estate," and "classified ads. These are each shown as a single total per title and day. Particularly important: AIS also records loose brochure inserts, which are only partially counted by MF, in addition to the bound inserts.
According to Gränicher, there will be a total of around 170 titles in the print media - at MF, there are almost twice as many at 331. The print titles were separated into A and B media according to their circulation, with the latter having second priority at AIS. "This procedure does not detract from the informative value of our statistics, because the 100 largest titles alone account for 85 percent of advertising spending. If you take the 150 biggest, you get 90 percent," says Gränicher.
The new online statistics will be fully usable in 2004 - including a comparison with the previous year. A test run together with publishers, media agencies and major advertising clients will start as early as July. Participants will be invited to provide assessments and make requests for changes. Together with this information, the statistics are to be given the finishing touches. Things will start getting serious in September - that's when AIS wants to ramp up customer advertising.
AIS earlier than Media FocusThe trump cards that AIS wants to play against Media Focus concern the acquisition quality in general (actual advertising effort per client), the price and the publication date of the data. The costs for clients would only be between 50 and 60 percent of what Media Focus charges, according to Gränicher. And: AIS is aiming for "the 15th of the following month" as the date for publishing the data - a few days earlier than Media Focus, which previously published around the 23rd of the following month. However, this is not a sustainable lead, as competitors are also working to move up their publication dates. "We want to be a good week faster," explains MF Managing Director Lukas Zihlmann. Nevertheless, Gränicher remains optimistic: "The statistics are new - so curiosity will certainly be high."
What moviegoers get to see in terms of advertising remains a mystery to media planners.
Media Focus also behind
After Wemf announced its new statistics in July 2002, Media Focus (MF) also set about making its own offering watertight against the emerging new competition (WW 44/ 02). In addition to more powerful analysis software, new usage variants and, in some cases, shorter publication cycles were promised. MF customers, for example, will be able to choose between three versions of data access: An expert solution (for daily intensive users), a standard variant (corresponds to the current offer) and a light version (cheapest variant). In addition, MF held out the prospect of shorter publication cycles in some cases: for TV and a limited range of daily newspapers (35 largest titles), there will be a switch to weekly data delivery.
Actually, one wanted to use the expanded possibilities and the
new evaluation software
as early as this summer, but this has not yet happened. The launch has been postponed until the beginning of 2004, explains MF Managing Director Lukas Zihlmann, "because programming the new software takes a bit more time than
planned." (dse)
Daniel Schifferle
