We are pleased to release our latest build of AdSphere today.  As previously announced, this new build features a number of changes to our video playback features.

As a background, our current system retains copies of all commercial airings for 10 days.   This is how we are able to make airing level videos available within airing detail exports.  Previously, outside of airing detail exports, the system would always playback the original master of the commercial which typically dates back to the date of first airing.

With this new build, the system will playback a more recent captured sample of the creative provided there are airings within the last 10 days. Also, if you run a network level ranking report and/or if you are playing back creatives specific to a network, the system will playback a more recent airing from that particular network.  We’ve added the name of the network, date, and time of video capture during playback so you’ll always know these details.  (see below)

For network level creative playback, there may be situations where there are no recent airings for a particular creative/network.  In this case, the system will look across all networks within the last 10 days and play a recent sample from another network.  If no recent airings exist across any networks, the system will playback the original captured master of the commercial.

This new playback logic has been implemented across all exports which feature play links including airings detail, advertiser, and brand excel outputs.

Here’s an interesting new feature to try, if you filter results for a particular network, and request an excel output for any advertiser or brand, when you click the play buttons inside of the excel file the system will attempt to playback samples from the selected network first and foremost!

As with all new releases, we would appreciate your feedback and kindly do report any issues to support@drmetrix.com

In this minor release, issues with the search feature, and with pagination, which have caused some display issues (including showing duplicates in results) have been resolved.  Also, some issues have been identified and fixed with regard to the active/inactive filters that were sometimes showing the wrong status.  Other minor tweaks to performance have been made.  We are working presently on stabilizing the system and fixing minor issues before moving on to new major features throughout the summer!

Thanks everyone for your continued support.

As we gear up for the 2017 Response Expo and inaugural Adsphere Awards, we wanted to thank everyone for your continued support.  Here’s a quick update on what to expect in terms of new AdSphere features in June.

Based on client feedback, we are bringing a variety of minor enhancements to AdSphere.  For example, network counts will now be summarized on the airing detail page.

In terms of major new features, we are overhauling our commercial playback feature.  When you click on a play button, the system will present the ‘most recent’ airing video (assuming there has been a recent airing of the creative in the last 10 days).   Also, if you are drilling down to play buttons at the network level, the system will play the most recent airing video from that particular network.  For current week and last week views, the system will always present the most recent airing video!  Now you don’t have to generate an airings detail output to play the most recent airing level videos.

We hope everyone has a great time at the Response Expo.  Please drop by the DRMetrix booth #409 at 2PM on Wednesday 4/26 for our inaugural AdSphere Awards!  Also, see you at the closing night party sponsored by the AdSphere Awards

•  Ability to switch between Brand and Advertiser rankings without filters being reset.
•  For Advertiser Rankings, addition of Short & Long Form “Retail” to brand classification.
•  Updated ranking excel output with DRMetrix logo, stylized layout, filter settings, and ability to sum total airings column
•  Back button moved to fixed position near top left of airing detail screen to make it easier to navigate back to ranking page. (Please never use browser back button for this)
•  When filtering for new advertisers or brands for the ‘current week’, all new brands not yet assigned to an advertiser will be assigned to an advertiser named “pending research” as shown below:

• New Weeks column has been added to brand rankings showing the number of media weeks that a brand has been detected on air.

DRTV – The Sleeping Giant

DRMetrix, the industry’s leading television research company, has released a surprise study that reveals the size of direct response television (DRTV) industry to be many times larger than previously thought.

DRMetrix is the brainchild of Joseph Gray, a 30-year veteran of the direct response television industry who has long thought that the size of the direct response television industry has been under-estimated by mainstream television research companies.  The ability to measure the size of the industry alluded him as research companies were unwilling to segment ‘direct response’ from traditional branded commercials.

“Back in 2003, a group of DRTV professionals joined together with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to form the DMA Broadcast Council”, Gray recalls.  “I was invited to co-chair the Research Committee.  We worked on a whitepaper to document solutions that would enable the DRTV industry to quantify itself with credible research.  We were hoping to convince the television research companies to start flagging commercials that included 1-800 numbers and web addresses but they were unwilling to do so.”

Nearly a decade later, Gray mustered the resources and started DRMetrix to tackle the problem.  Prior to the beginning of the 2015 broadcast year, the company deployed its AdSphere™ monitoring platform which today monitors over 100 national cable networks 24/7/365.  AdSphere™ was designed using the latest “automated content recognition” (ACR) technology along with advanced pattern and optical character recognition technologies to sniff out any television ad or program that includes direct response attributes such as 800 numbers, web addresses, SMS, etc.  Millions of dollars in investment and four years later, the moment of truth has finally arrived.

AdSphere projections for the 2016 broadcast year are the result of monitoring 92 national cable networks.  AdSphere identified over 3,500 DR brands which have included some combination of 800, Web, Mobile App Response and/or SMS allowing consumers to directly respond.  In addition to detecting over 89,000 infomercial (28.5 minute) airings, AdSphere detected an astonishing 7.92 million spots with an average run time of 39.65 seconds up to a maximum of 5 minutes in duration.  This averages out to 6.49 minutes of DR spots running across the networks every hour, every day, 365 days a year.  AdSphere has calculated the valuation of this inventory at $6.4 billion dollars applying ‘average DR industry rates’ and weighting the value of DR spots running across two different types of national cable ad breaks.

Gray projects that AdSphere™ estimates for network cable direct response valuation are 3-4 times greater than what leading television research companies have reported based on differing philosophies of what constitutes ‘direct response’ vs. ‘brand’ the lines of which have blurred over the years.  DRMetrix presents the following facts for the industry to consider:

AdSphere™

2016 short form media valuation by DR classification
(across 92 national cable networks)

*This number does not include broadcast, satellite, local cable DR expenditures or 28.5 infomercial valuations.

DRMetrix is excited to release these results to the industry so that everyone can understand how much the DRTV industry has grown.

The inaugural 2017 AdSphere Awards will recognize the accomplishments of the top direct response television advertisers and brands for the 2016 broadcast year.

Award recipients will be chosen across several industry classifications representing all facets of the industry.  AdSphere also segments DRTV campaigns across 20 major categories and 145 sub-categories. The complete list of  AdSphere Award winners for 2017 is online at www.drmetrix.com/adsphere-awards.html.

The awards presentation will take place at Response EXPO 2017, the DRTV industry’s yearly trade show, April 25-27, 2017 in San Diego, California

In order to scale a DRTV campaign, an advertiser’s creative and media execution needs to be optimized at the highest level.  Further, the campaign has to resonate with consumers in order to deliver an ROI to the advertiser sufficient to scale the size of the overall campaign.  Accordingly, the brands and advertisers will the highest overall projected schedule valuations have exemplified the art and science of DRTV advertising.  In creating the AdSphere Awards, DRMetrix is proud to bring the most inclusive awards program ever to the DRTV industry honoring advertisers across four industry classifications including short form products, lead generation, brand/DR, and long form.

To learn more about DRTV industry trends, please be sure to subscribe to the DRMetrix blog located at www.drmetrix.com/blog

We’re pleased to release the latest edition of the AdSphere™ User Guide.  We hope everyone is enjoying the new build and we’re looking forward to releasing some additional feature enhancements and refinements later this month.

We’re very excited to release our latest AdSphere™ build today.   Please do let us know should you find any issues with the new build and we’ll work to resolve them as quickly as possible.  To help everyone get up to speed with all of the new advanced filters and dynamic reporting additions we’ve created a group of AdSphere training videos that are available by clicking here.   If you would like to become an AdSphere ‘power user’, we recommend watching one video a day for 8 days to master all of the new features!

A new user guide will also be available to download later in the week.

If you would like to schedule a screen share session with us, we’d be happy to demonstrate some of the new features and answer any questions you or your team have!   Please click here to choose any day and available time that is convenient.

We look forward to everyone’s feedback and suggestions for improvement.  We’re still hard at work developing new additional features for AdSphere many of which will be debuted at the upcoming Response Expo end of April!  We hope to see you there!

DRMetrix & SciMark are pleased to release our first annual True Top 50 Report for 2016!

We discovered yesterday that the blog link on AdSphere was not appearing for some users.  This has been fixed.  If you’re visiting the blog for the first time, please be sure to checkout our prior posts.   Please be sure to join our Newsletter in order to receive automatic email notifications of any new blog posts.  System Status updates are not automatically emailed but are available to view at any time by visiting the AdSphere Blog and clicking the “system status” menu item.  The AdSphere Blog is located at www.adsphere.drmetrix.com/blog

Happy New Year everyone!   My family and I had an awesome time over the holidays visiting Australia.  I took a video of the firework celebration out on Sydney Harbor to share.  Please click here to watch it!

As you know, this is the place to come to get all the latest AdSphere insight and I’m excited to share some of the details with you!   We are hard at work on a major new release for AdSphere.  We’ve decided to hold off until February in order to include some additional features.

Our software has been redesigned over the last couple of months to be fully dynamic and our development team has made amazing progress.  This means our software can now support very customized reporting as well as advanced filters.  As an example, you will be able to choose a custom start and end date for reports.  So if you wanted to see rankings for the last two or three weeks in one aggregated view, you can!  We will also be introducing real time rankings which will allow you to view AdSphere data for the current week!

Several new filters will make their debut in the upcoming build:

Response Type Filter – Now you can filter for creatives that use any combination of phone, web, SMS/text, and mobile app.  You can apply AND/OR logic so if you only wanted to see creatives that use Mobile App AND SMS, you could do that, assuming there are any.  🙂

Creative Length Filter – Now you can filter for any short form spot lengths.  If you wanted to see all 2-5 minutes spots that ran this week, no problem!  How about 5 minute spots with mobile app response?  It will be fun to play with all of the combinations of these amazing new filters!

Network Filter – Now you will be able to filter Adsphere data down to a single network.  Want to see all 5 minute spots that have run this week on CNN with Mobile App Response?  Want to see which campaigns are placing stress on a network’s inventory causing low clearances?  The possibilities are endless.

New Creatives/Brands/Advertiser Filter – Now you’ll be able to filter for all of the new creatives, or brands, or advertisers for any time frame.  If you want to see “new” brands or advertisers running “5 minute” creatives this week with “Mobile App” response on “CNN” all of these filters working together will be able to create such a report.  New dynamic reporting from AdSphere makes all of this possible!

Wait there’s more!  As exciting as our next release is going to be, just wait until you see what we’re adding to AdSphere in time for the DRMA Show end of April!