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February 2006 - Strategy Magazine
Media

Series: Made to Measure: This is the first article in a series that explores the latest media measurement tools and spotlights campaigns that hit the mark.
So your brand's a TV star. What's it worth?
Since product placement is now a commodity like everything else, marketers are keen to prove it works. Fortunately, they are starting to get answers

by Patti Summerfield with files from Lisa D'Innocenzo
page 26

Now that product placement has become so ubiquitous, the man who invented the practice naturally has a new obsession - product placement measurement.

Frank Zazza, CEO of New Rochelle, N.Y.-based iTVX, was behind the famous Reeses Pieces scene in E.T, and the Junior Mints and all the other hilarious brand storylines in Seinfeld, through AIM Promotions, the creative placement company he founded in 1978. Five years ago, he set up iTVX to devise a method to measure the value of product placement, and launched the iTVX System in 2003.

It's timely, as product placement continues to swell. Stamford, Conn. media research firm PQ Media says the overall product placement market jumped by 30.5% to US$3.46 billion in 2004, US$1.87 billion of it in TV. By 2009 the firm says the overall number will reach US$6.94 billion.

As a result, advertisers are now dealing with clutter, as suggested by numbers from Place*Views, Nielsen Product Placement U.S., a Web-based system that identifies brands featured in product placement, as well as the type of placement used, when and where it occurred, and the audience size and demographics for the program minute at the time of occurrence. During 15 telecasts (Jan. 1 to Dec. 31/05), it found NBC's The Contender had 7,514 product placement occasions. Everlast Worldwide recorded 3,061 visual hits in 60 telecasts of various shows. And in part because American Idol on Fox had 3,357 product placement occasions over 43 episodes, Coke scored 3,306 hits in 413 telecasts. (NMR Canada expects to launch Place*Views in this country soon.)

Not surprisingly, then, marketers are pushing for measurement tools - and broadcasters like TVA and Global are complying.

So far, media planners have been making product placement choices based on matching a program's audience to their clients' key customer demo - and gut instinct. "It's very difficult [to measure effectiveness] because we cannot isolate the value of it," admits Jeanne Northcote, SVP group account director on the P&G business at The Media Company in Toronto. "We analyze audiences [and we] do all the analysis of how [the placement] compares in cost efficiency to, and how much more or less effective it is than a 30-second spot."

TVA, the Quebec network that introduced top reality shows like Star Académie, hopes to get a handle on product placement measurement soon. It has hooked up with iTVX and will be conducting four to six tests of the system during the first half of this year.

 "iTVX will measure the level of quality of our integration or placement and we will also contract for some awareness research," says Reneault Poliquin, VP of TVA. "After that we're going to try to establish collaboration with advertisers and agencies to set some kind of benchmark and offer it on a larger scale."

Zazza's system uses more than 50 variables to equate the value of a product placement or integration to what iTVX calls a Q Ratio, a decimal fraction of a 30-second commercial. Variables include psychological and perceptual factors, external forces such as demo and psychographics of the audience, brand resonance, salience, and awareness as well as the length of time the product is on screen, context, clarity, integration, and involvement.

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