The CW intends to run just as much advertising during shows viewed online as it does on TV next season, according to an executive familiar with the plans.
The move is the first tangible sign that media companies–besieged by ratings drop-offs for their traditional television programs–will likely force new ad intrusions on consumers who had grown accustomed to seeing less commercial clutter online.
“It’s something we kind of expected to happen,” said Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer at WPP’s GroupM. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you start seeing some of the other networks kind of move in that direction.”
Indeed, the executive familiar with CW’s efforts said the network intends to make the case to advertisers that they should no longer see any difference between buying an ad for a TV episode or for a stream of that episode online.
All TV networks received an incentive to equalize their TV and online ad loads earlier this year, when Nielsen announced plans to provide commercial ratings for shows whether they appear on television or on the web.
The combined ratings will be available for evaluation this September and are meant to become the basis for ad negotiations next February. For Nielsen to provide commercial ratings that way, shows seen online will have to include the same group of commercials that run on TV.
The executive familiar with the CW’s decision, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, said the change was not spurred by the Nielsen plan. The network started pondering the idea just after the start of 2010, the executive said, after the network noticed positive growth online for programs such as Vampire Diaries.
But the CW may be able to make the move more easily than its older broadcast rivals. It tailors its programming to women in their teens and 20s, a category of consumer more familiar with new technology than the audiences of networks such as CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox.
Its television audiences are also typically smaller than the television audiences generated by other broadcast outlets. Realizing that its online audiences were often comparable to its audiences on TV, the CW had already increased the number of commercials during its online ad breaks, going to two from one in December.
The CW’s plan also is bolstered by the fact that the network, owned jointly by CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc., does not syndicate its current programming online. CW shows are not available on Hulu, for example, only at cwtv.com.
And there is another factor at play: CW suffered a tremendous drop in ad revenue in 2009. Its ad sales dropped a whopping 25.2% last year, falling to approximately $590.5 million in 2009 from $789.5 million in 2008, according to Kantar Media. The network gave up its Sunday-night programming in late 2008.
Despite all that, the CW’s move runs contrary to the evolution of online TV distribution so far.
Hulu, the online-video site owned by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney, runs significantly fewer ads than one would see watching TV. And Disney’s ABC.com has met with some success by running ABC shows with just a few ads, often from a single advertiser.
The network intends to use online-impressions data from DoubleClick as well as Nielsen VideoCensus data to give advertisers a sense of how its shows are watched online, said the executive.
Even with the plan, the CW intends to protect its TV ratings–which still lure more dollars than any online metric.
The executive said the network would wait 75 hours after the debut of a new episode on TV before making an online stream available on its website. That policy would help CW bolster its so-called “commercial ratings” or “C3,” the industry term for viewers who watch a show within three days of its debut and don’t skip watching the commercials.
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