Report: Agencies not sold on PPM in Canada
The Toronto Globe and Mail reports the Association of Canadian Advertisers says the PPM isn't ready for prime time, and is calling on BBM to keep the hard-wired system in place.
"We're certainly not ready to switch..." says Ron Lund, President and CEO of the ACA. "PPMs at some point in time may be the way to move technologically, but as far as we're concerned, the jury's still out."
Part of what concerns advertisers is that, in trials over the past year, where BBM has tested both measurement devices, the PPM is recording audiences as much as 15% larger than the traditional devices. The ACA worries that will result in higher ad rates, since the new technology suggests that more people are watching.
"We're extremely nervous. We've called on them not to dismantle their current system until the new system has been fully vetted and tested," Lund said.
BBM president Jim MacLeod says the system has been in development for over 10 years and has already been tested extensively. He predicts more and more viewers will watch TV on wireless television sets or on personal digital assistants, which will make hard-wired ratings systems obsolete.
"Plasma TVs and wireless TVs and TVs on airplanes - - this is all a reality. How is the wired world going to deal with this two years or three years from now?" MacLeod says.
The ratings industry is also wrestling with the issue of how to account for television that is not watched live, but recorded on a digital recorder for future viewing. BBM is proposing that anything watched within seven days of broadcast be counted.
Since 8/30, BBM has been using data collected through PPMs as its official currency in Montreal and Quebec City, while continuing to use the wired technology in some homes.
But with the PPMs recording about 15% greater viewership, the shift in technologies is about more than how television viewing is measured; it's about what viewing is measured. Unlike hard-wired devices, the PPM will pick up television consumed in bars, at work or at friend's houses.
Since PPMs use audio signals, they can also register false positives when someone is in another room and can hear the television but isn't watching.
MacLeod said that in testing, such out-of-the-room reception is believed to boost numbers by about 10%. But he said that the traditional hard-wired devices inflate numbers by 7% or 8% when a viewer has the TV on, but not the volume. Such muted viewing wouldn't be picked up on a PPM.
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