Sponsor (Apr-June 1962)

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiia iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii mil i ::i . : . . Cost of reaching cigarette-users by program type PROGRAM CATEGORY MEDIAN CPM* AVERAGE CPM* WESTERNS $1.65 $2.38 MYSTERY-ADVENTURE 1.99 2.05 DRAMA 2.02 2.03 VARIETY 2.08 1.86 NEWS 2.99 3.05 SITUATION COMEDY 3.47 3.76 QUIZ-PANEL — 3.09 *CPM here refers to cost-perthousand per commercial minute (not including talent fees) per total cigarette smokers in audience. Source: The Pulse, Inc. EFFICIENCY of various network tv programs in reaching the smoker is best represented by the median c-p-m MORE SMOKERS AT LESS COST ^ Cost-per-1,000 means a lot more to cigarette advertisers when based on viewers who smoke — new demographic breakdown from Pulse isolates "waste" audience N ot so long ago — and to great extent even now — the placement of broadcast schedules which targeted the consumer were much like the child's game of pinning the tail on the donkey. Armed with head-counting figures, timebuyers and their mentors worked media miracles in what some would call a sophisticated game of "blind man's bluff." But the long hullabaloo from various corners of the ad industry for more and more qualitative, or demographic, data on broadcast audiences has finally begun to draw some visible results. The research services have given qualitative audience studies serious thought, and some have given it serious application. Last week, The Pulse, Inc., released to sponsor the results of a study made on the costper-1,000 of reaching not just viewers, but viewers who are definite prospects, in this case for cigarette advertisers. The cigarette smoker data is among the more recent in what Pulse calls "Tv Audience Profiles," a series of studies begun in November 1960. Prior to these profiles, says Pulse, marketing and advertising men had to rely on intuition or costly special surveys to determine which tv program offered more prospects or bigger concentrations of prospects) for their products. Thus, they did not know with certainty if their budgets were being spent with maximum costper-prospect efficiency. But in light of the product-use and demographic characteristics which apply to the advertised product — in this case cigarettes — the advertiser can examine programs and program types in terms of maximum prospects rather than maximum viewers. The cost-per-1,000 viewers concept, then, may be extended to costper-1,000 "pertinent viewers — viewers who may be legitametly considered in the advertiser's market po tential," in the words of Laurence Roslow, Pulse associate director. In the charts on this and the following page, 45 tv programs sponsored by cigarette companies in the 1961-62 season are analyzed for their cost-per-1,000 per total cigarettesmoking viewers. On this basis, the cost-per-1,000 ranges from a low of $1.08 for the Jack Paar Show, to $5.43 for the Bob Cummings program. The median cost is $2.21, based on a median of total cigarette smokers in the audience, or 8.829,000. The average cost is $2.47 per1,000, based on an average of 9,555,000 cigarette smokers. The median and the average are given, explains Roslow, because an average alone is often misleading. These figures tend to make an average lopsided. On the other hand. Roslow explains, a median gives a "truer measure." In the chart on the next page, for example, where 45 "cases ' or SPONSOR 25 june 1962 31