TVision says Volvo ad broke through the clutter

Viewers paid more attention to the commercials in Fox’s Lethal Weapon than any other broadcast show in the first half of the year, according to a new report from TVision.

Lethal Weapon also scored high in ad viewability, according to TVision.

Ad viewability shows if people are in the room when the TV is on and the ads played. Ad attention measures if the viewers were looking at the screen. The metrics are designed to help understand the value of advertising within a program and includes data on broadcast, cable and over-the-top.

Other broadcast shows ranking high in ad attention were Speechless and Fresh Off the Boat from ABC, NBC’s Will & Grace, Fox’s The Passage and CW’s Arrow.

The CW had five of the top 10 ranked shows in terms of ad viewability, with Legacies, In The Dark, Arrow, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Supergirl. The top ranked show was NCIS: The Cases They Can’t Forget on CBS and Lethal Weapon ranked third behind Legacies.

TVision noted that dramas did well in ad viewability while sitcoms overperformed in ad attention.

“As we know, all impressions are not created equal. All impressions are not necessarily viewed by human beings that are attentive, receptive and ready to buy your product or service,” said TVision adviser, David Cohen, the former president of media agency Magna North America. “Understanding TV Viewability and Attention allows us to move beyond the ‘opportunity to see’ and understand who is actually seeing our ads in-market. It gives us a second-by-second view and allows us to look at our television investments in a similar way to digital video. It allows us to plan better, optimize better and extract the greatest value from our investment. It will also provide a solid foundation for the duration-weighted currency that the industry is moving toward.”

TVision also measure how well commercials perform in breaking through the clutter. The spot with the highest Creative Attention Score in the first half was Volvo’s Follow No One. spots for Bounty, Frito-Lay, Dawn and The Home Depot rounded out the top five.

“TVision’s advanced technology provides data that has never been available to the market before,” said Luke McGuinness, president of TVision. “This report, and the data it contains, illustrates the type of performance metrics now available to advertisers and networks. With it they gain a clearer picture of what’s actually happening in the living room when programming and advertising air.”