Big news! I'm teaming up with DRMetrix to create the industry's most accurate scorecard ever published: the new True Top 50.
The need for a "Billboard" chart for DRTV campaigns has always been clear: Marketers, producers, retailers and others need to know what's really working on DRTV so they can be smart about what bets they make. We’ve had such charts since the 1990s, but serious accuracy problems make them unreliable. This issue is what prompted me to introduce the "true" concept in the summer of 2010 using the best third-party data available at that time. Yet the result was still far from perfect.
For example, I quickly had to abandon the idea of ranking campaigns. Because we buy our media at deep discounts that vary by agency and even by hour, rate-card estimates have no shot at being accurate. This is one reason why self-reporting (with all of its problems) became a dominant methodology.
My solution was to present the unranked list of top spenders with which you're familiar. But there are still problems with those charts. With no good way of accounting for 30s and 60s, I have only been able to include 120s in my calculations. I've also had no way to keep track of local airings, which can be a significant portion of DR spending. And so on.
Enter Joseph Gray and DRMetrix. If you haven’t heard the name, you will soon. Smart agencies, advertisers and retail buyers are rapidly signing up for access to the company's AdSphere service. The reason: The data is incredibly accurate, unimpeachable and custom-made for our industry. Using the latest commercial “sniffing” technology, DRMetrix is able to pick up and log every DRTV airing and present that data in highly useful ways. You can see who’s advertising what products where, watch the latest versions of their commercials and study trend data over time. Most exciting for me, I can rank the True Top 50 accurately at last!
Going forward, Joseph and his team will be supplying the data and the charts, and I will be presenting the analysis as well as announcing the True Top Marketer, True Top Producer and other awards for the period in question. We’ll be doing this twice a year, so if you’re in the game, you have two shots at annual glory.
It all kicks off Monday morning right here on the The SciMark Report. Be sure to check your inbox first thing.
