Author: Joseph Gray

Goodbye from Joseph Gray

Joseph Gray AdSphere

As the founder of DRMetrix, this will be my final AdSphere blog post. As you may know, DRMetrix was acquired by iSpot in October of 2021. Since then, I’ve truly enjoyed the nearly four years I’ve spent working with iSpot’s incredible team! Thanks to their support, DRMetrix has recently expanded to monitor over 450 media properties across national networks, local broadcast, and syndication.

I’ve decided that it’s time to move on to new adventures, personal passion projects, and yes, a bit of retirement. My last day will be May 30, 2025. Before I go, I want to say thank you to everyone who has supported DRMetrix over the years. I’m deeply grateful.

As a parting gift, I’ve added one final update to the Adsphere training series. The latest video introduces our enhanced media type filter, which makes it easier than ever to analyze TV media and creative execution across national, local broadcast, and syndicated shows from the top 40 markets.

Over the past 13 years, it has been an incredible journey building DRMetrix into a leading platform embraced by direct response ad sales teams, agencies, brands, and vendors alike. While I’ll sincerely miss the many friendships I’ve made in this industry, I leave with complete confidence in the team that will carry DRMetrix forward.

Brent Peterson, Joseph Spillman, Sengen Prasomsouk, Dee Dee Peterson, and Gloria Peck have all played essential roles in building and operating DRMetrix. Their dedication has been unmatched, and I’m proud to have worked alongside them. They’ll continue their great work, backed by the outstanding team at iSpot.tv. Joseph Spillman will be your main contact for client services and you can email him at joseph.spillman@ispot.tv

Many of you are already connected with me on Linkedin. If not, feel free to follow me there to stay in touch and keep up with my next adventures.

It’s been an honor. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for DRMetrix and the industry we’ve helped shape together.

With heartfelt thanks,

Joseph Gray

MAY 2025 – Build

Joseph Gray AdSphere

Exciting Update: New Beta Build of AdSphere Launches Today!

DRMetrix is proud to announce the release of a new beta version of AdSphere—bringing powerful enhancements to campaign tracking across the nation’s top television markets.

With this update, AdSphere now reports national campaign airings on ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX local broadcast affiliates in the top 40 U.S. markets. Additionally, AdSphere now tracks national campaigns appearing in a wide array of syndicated programming across these same local stations. Data for local broadcast and syndication is available going back to Q4, 9/30/24.

For creatives running exclusively in local markets, we encourage clients to upload their spots using DRMetrix’s AVS system. This ensures accurate recognition and tracking. To learn how to register creatives before they air—especially those planned for local-only distribution—please contact us at support@drmetrix.com.

Please note: Because syndicated programming schedules vary by market, ad placements may differ in both day and time. As a result, AdSphere will not be able to map standard ROS dayparts or days of the week for airings reported within syndicated programs across its various reports and pages.

Please note on campaigns buying media in Syndicated Shows, you can include the individual market syndicated airings in airing detail outputs by clicking the box “Include local Broadcast Stations syndicated detections”. By default, the syndicated airings will be reported but not at the individual local affiliate level.

Important Note on Media Type Settings

While subject to change, the initial beta release of AdSphere will default to reporting airings across National, Local, and Syndication. If you prefer to view only National Network data, as in the prior version of AdSphere, simply click the blue “EDIT” button and adjust the new Media Type filter settings.

The Media Type filter is now available on the Home tab, as well as on Advertiser Pages and in other key sections of the platform.

Please note: with the addition of local broadcast and syndicated data, some areas of AdSphere—such as airing detail pages—may take longer to load. To improve performance, you can switch back to National-only reporting at any time.

We’re excited to bring you these powerful new capabilities and look forward to your feedback as you explore the beta. If you encounter any issues or bugs with the new build, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@drmetrix.com

9th Annual AdSphere™ Award Winners Announced

Joseph Gray AdSphere , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

9th Annual AdSphere™ Awards

 Recognize Top Direct-to-Consumer Advertisers in 2024

AbbVie, Progressive, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, E. Mishan & Sons, Great Healthworks, SharkNinja, and LifeLock by Norton among those taking top honors.

SAN DIEGO- (March 17, 2025) – Direct-to-consumer advertisers spent over 21.4 billion on national cable and broadcast networks in 2024 according to DRMetrix, an iSpot company.  To celebrate the industry’s accomplishments, the AdSphere™ Awards will honor the direct-to-consumer industry’s top advertisers and brands.

Awards will be presented to the winners at PDMI EAST 2025, where the leaders in Performance-Driven Marketing will come together in Miami Beach, Florida from April 7-9, 2025.  The AdSphere™ Awards is the first awards program to be inclusive of the entire direct-to-consumer industry with advertisers such as T-Mobile, Columbia Pictures, Chime, Ro, Wayfair.com, University of Phoenix, Sleep Number, The Farmer’s Dog, Trivago, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and many others being honored.

“The AdSphere awards recognize best-of-class advertisers and brands across four industry classifications including brand/direct, lead generation, short-form products, and 28.5-minute infomercials,” said Joseph Gray, founder of the AdSphere Awards and DRMetrix, an iSpot.tv company.  “Direct-to-consumer campaigns achieving this level of scale demonstrate consumer popularity and best-in-class creative and media execution.  The AdSphere Awards are the most inclusive award program for the entire direct-to-consumer industry recognizing over 60 honorees including all of our best-of-category award recipients.”

AdSphere monitors a universe of 160+ national networks on a 24/7/365 basis.  In just over nine years, AdSphere has identified over 17,000 direct-to-consumer brands.  In addition to detecting over 900,000 infomercial (28.5 minute) airings, AdSphere has detected over 170 million spots of varying creative lengths up to five minutes in duration.  The awards recognize top brands across a wide range of industry categories representing all facets of the industry.  AdSphere segments campaigns across over 190 major categories and sub-categories. The complete list of AdSphere Award winners is online at www.drmetrix.com/adsphere-awards.html.

About DRMetrix

DRMetrix, an iSpot.tv company, monitors over 160 national TV networks 24/7/365, tracking direct-to-consumer ads using all creative lengths including spot, 5-min, and long-form which include web addresses, mobile app response, SMS, or toll free numbers.  For more information, please visit www.drmetrix.com.

System Status – 7/31/24

Joseph Gray System Status

DRMetrix will be upgrading its database today to improve system performance & responsiveness. During this process, AdSphere will be offline for an estimated 30 minutes or so which should begin sometime after 3pm PDT / 6pm EDT. If any unplanned technical issues arise, updates will be posted here.

8th Annual AdSphere™ Award Winners Announced

Joseph Gray AdSphere

8th Annual AdSphere™ Awards

 Recognize Top Direct-to-Consumer Advertisers in 2023

 

AbbVie, Progressive, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, E. Mishan & Sons, Great Healthworks, SharkNinja, and LifeLock by Norton among those taking top honors.

SAN DIEGO- (March 8, 2024) – Direct-to-consumer advertisers spent over 20.3 billion on national cable and broadcast networks in 2023 according to DRMetrix, an iSpot company.  To celebrate the industry’s accomplishments, the AdSphere™ Awards will honor the direct-to-consumer industry’s top advertisers and brands.

Awards will be presented to the winners at PDMI EAST 2024, where the leaders in Performance-Driven Marketing will come together in Miami Beach, Florida from April 8-10, 2024.  The AdSphere™ Awards is the first awards program to be inclusive of the entire direct-to-consumer industry with advertisers such as T-Mobile, Universal Pictures, Chime, Golo, Wayfair.com, University of Phoenix, Consumer Cellular, Sleep Number, Chewy.com, Burger King, and many others being honored.

“The AdSphere awards recognize best-of-class advertisers and brands across four industry classifications including brand/direct, lead generation, short-form products, and 28.5-minute infomercials,” said Joseph Gray, founder of the AdSphere Awards and DRMetrix, an iSpot.tv company.  “Direct-to-consumer campaigns achieving this level of scale demonstrate consumer popularity and best-in-class creative and media execution.  The AdSphere Awards are the most inclusive award program for the entire direct-to-consumer industry recognizing over 60 honorees including all of our best-of-category award recipients.”

AdSphere monitors a universe of 140+ national networks on a 24/7/365 basis.  In just over nine years, AdSphere has identified over 17,000 direct-to-consumer brands.  In addition to detecting over 900,000 infomercial (28.5 minute) airings, AdSphere has detected over 170 million spots of varying creative lengths up to five minutes in duration.  The awards recognize top brands across a wide range of industry categories representing all facets of the industry.  AdSphere segments campaigns across over 190 major categories and sub-categories. The complete list of AdSphere Award winners is online at www.drmetrix.com/adsphere-awards.html.

About DRMetrix

DRMetrix, an iSpot.tv company, monitors over 140 national TV networks 24/7/365, tracking direct-to-consumer ads using all creative lengths including spot, 5-min, and long-form which include web addresses, mobile app response, SMS, or toll free numbers.  For more information, please visit www.drmetrix.com and be sure and download our latest direct-to-consumer industry study!

System Status – 1/9/24

Joseph Gray System Status

A technical issue has caused an unexpected back log on report generation inside of AdSphere. Our team is working on a solution to get the system caught back up. In the interim, many will experience reports stuck at 0% without any obvious progress. We’re hoping to get this resolved soon and we will post updates here.

11:49AM PST Update – Progress is being made. Many reports run today have already been processed. Reports that were stuck yesterday were removed and our team is investigating resubmitting these. If a particular report is urgent, you may re-run at this time. More details to follow…

1:50PM PST Update – All reports from 1/8 and 1/9 have been processed and all reports appear to be generating fine now. Thank you to everyone for your patience!

System Status – 11/17/23

Joseph Gray System Status

Speeding Up Reports

Our technical teams have been busy these past weeks optimizing the AdSphere platform under Amazon Web Services (AWS). Yesterday, enhancements were made to improve the time that it takes to create excel/cvs reports.

Airing Level Videos

As mentioned previously, airing level videos now include the complete ad break. Using the slider on the video playback timeline, one can scroll backwards or forward to view any part of the ad break in order to see all commercials that ran inside of the break including star and end of the ad break where network icons are typically displayed. Now everyone will have visual confirmation of the network and entire ad break for each commercial airing. The new enhanced airing level videos take between 5-7 hours to become available after air time. Going forward, the team hopes to reduce the delivery timeframe for airing level videos to within 3-4 hours. Infomercial airing level videos are available on SD networks but airing level videos on HD networks for long form are still a work in progress. That said, airing level thumbnail images are available for long form across all networks so one can still confirm that the correct infomercial ran, confirm 800 number, etc.

Daily and Weekly Reports

There have also been recent improvements made that should help to speed the delivery of daily and weekly reports each week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone has an amazing Thanksgiving this coming week!

System Status – 11/01/23

Joseph Gray System Status

Hope everyone had a great Halloween! There have been some breakthroughs from the past day. Network mismatch on video play from ranking system is fixed. Airings count at the bottom of the network detail pages are fixed as of this early morning. Infomercial airings are also getting back to normal. The team is now looking into fixing weekly legacy ASONTV retail reporting. Tracking & Alert emails are also starting to come back online. Airing level videos under the new unified platform are still a work in progress and currently sample videos are playing in the system instead. As things further stabilize, if you experience any issues with the system, please email support@drmetrix.com

System Status – Week #2 on Unified Platform – 10/30/23

Joseph Gray System Status

This morning issues with crons were discovered that process weekly reports. The data is showing in Adsphere and these same reports can be manually run and exported as an interim solution. If anyone needs help to manually generate a critical report, please email support@drmetrix.com for assistance.

These cron issues should be resolved soon and automated delivery will resume and missing reports will be resent in the next day or two. There are a few other issues in AdSphere this morning which are being looked at on priority for resolution. One is that network airing totals at the bottom of network detail pages are inaccurate and don’t match the total airings shown at the top of page. There is a backend process that has been identified as the culprit and it will be resolved soon. Airing level videos are still a work in progress and there is a network mismatch error on video playback in ranking system (which is a minor issue not impacting video playback). A more serious issue is 28.5m long form reporting which is delayed from last week and is not caught up at this hour. These are some of the areas that our team will be focusing on this week for resolution. We apologize for these issues and we’ll be working hard to resolve them as quickly as possible.