Understanding the Concept of "Impressions" For Your TV Commercial

When you're ready for your company's commercial to be on television for your local community, the region, or even the country to see, you will need to understand the pricing involved. The television advertising rate isn't like going to the grocery store where everyone pays the same amount for a gallon of milk. A local business being shown to a small community and an agency blocking off spots for their large client are going to pay different prices for the same time slot. This can get confusing, but it doesn't have to be. The only thing you should be concerned with is the number of impressions you are receiving per spot and how much you are paying for those impressions.

What are "Impressions?"

Whether you got a good tv commercial rate or not depends on the impressions you paid for. Impressions are the total number of exposures to your advertisement. In this case, it is your new commercial. This doesn't mean the number of people necessarily, though. Does that sound confusing? Think of it this way- if one person is exposed to your television commercial five times, it would count as five impressions and not just one. Impressions are calculated by multiplying the number of "Spots" by "Average Persons." Average Persons is the number of people that, on average, will be exposed to each Spot. The spot here is your television commercial. In order to reach an Average Persons number, this is calculated by multiplying Population by Rating then dividing by 100.

However, these measurements are a guess and not science. Not all impressions are the same, or even very accurate. Advertisers need to know the attention of their individual ads, not the average attention of all ads that run during a given broadcast. After all, attention comes and goes over the course of every program. As a quick example, viewers are much more likely to stay in the room through the commercial breaks at the beginning of a football game than they are toward the end of a blowout. By then, they're chatting, in the kitchen getting more snacks, or have lost interest in the game all together. Of course, the media station doesn't know ahead of time whether the game will be a blow out or come down to the wire. This is precisely why the tv commercial rate is tricky to calculate correctly. You simply cannot know for sure the impressions you'll get!

There's a few basics you can understand, though. Think of your ad as "viewable" instead of getting impressions. In order for you to measure an ad as viewable, the commercial must run while a viewer is present with the sound on for two consecutive seconds and the impression must meet the following additional criteria:

#1 The TV is tuned to the same program for at least five minutes

#2 A person is present for at least two minutes during the program

#3 A person is present for at least one second during a rolling 21-minute window

If all of these things occur, congratulations- your television ad was viewed!