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 What We Do |
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The IMS Report is the most comprehensive report of its kind. The Infomercial Monitoring Service tracks over 30,000 hours of paid television programming each month providing subscribers with data in an easy-to-read format that details infomercial and spot activity on national cable and satellite television. Reports are published weekly, and are then compiled into monthly editions. Founder and publisher Sam Catanese began monitoring cable television in 1984 when the infomercial industry was still in its infancy. In 1993 the IMS Database and what is known as the IMS Report were established and publishing began. Over the course of 20 years Direct Response TV, once frowned upon has woven it's way into the fabric of advertising today. Now corporate giants, traditional advertisers, marketers and industry moguls alike have found DR to be an effective means of branding and selling products. Millions of people watch and buy through electronic retailing every day.
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| We Monitor 24/7
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| IMS records more than 40 networks, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which reach all 50 states. IMS monitors recorded tapes, DVDs, and hard drives daily, and enters gathered information into our database, review new shows, add new titles to our library and publish reports weekly and monthly. IMS begins its reports with the National Cable Rankings for both Frequency and Media. The Frequency Ranking is a count of each program's airs on stations monitored by IMS as reflected on the grid pages. The Indexed Media Ranking is derived from accumulated gross media rates per half hour show relative to where and when it aired during each week. Indexes are quantitative, and are not arbitrarily determined. They remain constant until the gross rates change quarterly. The Top 25 programs for each week are ranked and their standings from the previous week are also listed. Rankings indicate each of the programs' total number of airs, media index value or approximate dollars spent, the number of stations on which they aired, and each program's consecutive weeks on chart. The two rankings are displayed side-by-side on a single page for at-a-glance evaluation. |
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| Easy To Read Grids
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There are two National Cable Distribution pages that follow the Top 25 Rankings Page. The first indicates how frequently each of the Top 25 programs for a given week aired on each of the stations monitored. The second breaks down gross media dollar expenditure per station for each of the week's Top 25 shows. Numbers are determined by what we detect. They are not skewed by personal opinion and are not influenced by outside sources. Grids are divided into half hour segments in 8-hour blocks. Shaded cells indicate paid programming. New infomercials or versions detected by IMS are highlighted with a border. Occasionally more than one version of a show will air during the same week. Numbers are used to differentiate between versions. Regular programming appears in non-shaded cells. The monitoring period for each week runs from 4:00 pm Friday to 3:30 pm the following Friday. New programs detected each week by IMS are described in detail in the New Show Breakouts. The pages provide pertinent information for each new show or version of a show including: The Product Description with the offer, price and accepted payment methods listed. The Show Summary is a non-biased review of the production often identifying program format, locations, hosts, celebrity guests and testimonials. Upsell information is also included when available. Other details may include the marketer, the production company, the toll free number, a mailing address or URL, and the date and channel on which IMS first detected the show. The Spot Rankings come next. The 50 most frequently seen short form direct response ads on stations monitored by IMS during paid programming blocks are ranked by frequency of detections with price, marketing company, toll free number and category included. The New Short Form DR page features a list of each new spot or version of a spot detected by IMS that week. A product description, price, marketing company and toll free number are included. Monthly editions of the IMS Report are compilations of the weekly reports published in a given month with two additional ranking pages included. The U.S. National Cable Frequency Top 100 is determined by combining the weekly standings for the most frequently seen infomercials each month. The U.S. Media Index Top 100 ranks programs based on gross media expenditures for the month.
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| Experience |
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Our experience, database and programming library are unsurpassed. Join the thousands of major marketers, producers, media buyers, ad agencies, manufacturers and retailers who look to IMS for reliable information when they need it. IMS is the most accurate and authoritative resource for information on the Direct Response Television Industry. Subscribe to IMS today. For more information contact an IMS representative.
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