Thank you for sharing a few minutes with me.

You may have noticed several Media Spikes so far have mentioned The Power of 26.

An expression I’ve coined and use as a subtitle in my Blog as part of The Spike of Angels. Quite simply The Power of 26 refers to the enormous power in the alphabet, and how those  26 letters are the lynchpin to our world and every level of communication.

And sometimes, in media presentations, you’ve probably noticed a lot of abbreviations and initials are used to take the place of cumbersome words and titles. 

While texting and tweeting have forced us to rely on phonetics instead of full words, I thought it might be helpful to elaborate on many of the initials and short forms you may see or hear or read in many media memos.

A Glossary of Media Terms could fill the next five to six e-mails in this series. That’s more than overwhelming. But I thought a few terms from each of the primary media may be of assistance. This is not meant to be exhaustive, but to give you some knowledge next time these terms show up in a media presentation (You’ll impress the media person too, if you know some of the jargon).

ADJACENCY: A commercial time slot immediately before or after a specific program (First spot when the program goes to break, or last spot before the commercial break returns to programming). If these two spots are the same advertisers, it’s often called Bookends.

Audience Composition: The characteristics which make up your target group. Based on demographics, lifestyle, income, education etc.

BCR-Budget Control Report: Sometimes monthly, quarterly or annually, it tracks actual expenditures versus projections.

CA: Census Agglomeration: A geographical area, defined by Statistics Canada, with a population of between 10,000 and 99,999.

CMA- Census Metropolitan Area (CMA): Geographical Area defined by Statistics Canada, with a population in excess of 100,000.

CMA – Central Market Area (CMA): Geographical area defined by BBM, usually centered around one urban centre.

CPR – Cost Per Rating: The costs of delivering a message to 1% of a pre-determined group.

CPM – Cost Per Thousand: The cost to deliver a message to 1,000 individuals- preferably the individuals who fit your target group.

CUME- Cumulative Audience: This is the total unduplicated number of homes or individuals who are reached by a schedule of commercials or programs or print issues within a given time.

EFFICIENCY: Evaluating how a good a buy you or your space buyer did based on CPM’s or CPR’s as above.

EMA – Extended market Area (EMA): Geographical area comprised of a market and adjacent counties or census divisions as defined by Nielsen Media Research.

FREQUENCY: The number of times an advertising message has been exposed to a target audience.

GRP’s: Gross Rating Points: The sum of all ratings delivered by a given schedule against a pre-determined target group.  GRP’s= Reach X Frequency ( Reach ie: 25%, times Frequency, say 4 times = 100 GRP’s).

HUT : Homes Using Television: The percentage of households with one or more televisions tuned in at a given time.

IMPRESSIONS/MESSAGES: The total number of commercial occasions (or ads) scheduled, multiplied by the total target audience potentially exposed to each occasion. The media plan’s impressions are usually expressed as Gross Impressions. That is the total potential number of opportunities for the message to be seen.

PRE-BUY ANALYSIS: A report of the estimated deliveries of a purchased media schedule.
POST BUY ANALYSIS: An analysis of actual media deliveries calculated after a spot or schedule has run.

REACH: A measurement of the cumulative unduplicated target audience potentially exposed once or more to a particular program, station or publication in a specific time period. This is usually expressed as a percentage of the target population in a geographically defined area.

There are easily over 200 additional terms of Jargon and alphabet soup related to the industry and to Media in particular.

As noted, this was not intended to be exhaustive - nobody wants to read a dictionary- but they may give you a glimmer of familiarity that will make future meetings and presentations clearer for you.

The Power of 26 is an indispensable tool for every interest and industry. In the abbreviated words of my son’s good buddy ‘Tigger’ of Winnie the Pooh fame, T.T.F.N.  (not a media term, but Ta Ta For Now!)

Stay tuned.

P.S.: If you are so inclined to learn more, please contact me- dennis@firstimpressionsmedia.ca, and ask specifically for The Exhaustive List of Media Abbreviations and Terminology.

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