Sam Thielman

CNBC, the financial news network, is done with daytime Nielsen ratings.

"They are no longer guaranteeing the business day, which is the most important daypart for a financial client," a source told Adweek. "They believe that their primary business day viewing is done in offices and therefore not monitored by Nielsen and underrepresented."

Asked whether the company was abandoning Nielsens for daytime, the network offered the following from Seth Winter, evp, news and sports ad sales group: "While we completely agree that CNBC's core audience remains virtually unmeasured by current traditional metrics, our agreements with our clients are confidential," Winter wrote. "As we continue to explore the best measurement opportunities, our conversations with clients include new metrics that accurately demonstrate the power of the CNBC audience."

A source said the network has told advertisers that only half its clients asked for guarantees, anyway. That probably worked out very well for that half, because if you're getting your deliveries regardless of ratings and your price is pegged to ratings guarantees, you may have gotten make-goods in 2013 even though you were reaching your audience.

It seems that CNBC has decided to put its money where its mouth is and withdraw guarantees for the daytime, which is a crucial daypart for most people anxious to reach the network's demographics. Instead, said a source close to the network, the company is offering guarantees based on its own internal measurement of ad deliveries.

The world of branded content has changed. Suddenly branded movies and TV shows are competing for the same marketing dollar and chunk of free time as everything else in the entertainment world.

Advertising, in many cases, is no longer a toll you pay to watch content but is taking the form of content itself. “Brands are realizing you have to hire experts” if you want to compete with pure entertainment companies, said Maker Studios’ Jason Krebs, who has worked all over the digital media ad world. “Procter & Gamble isn’t necessarily going to do some of these things themselves.”

And branded entertainment is vital. “If you want to reach millennials in the next five years, they’re going to be looking at this a lot more than at the spots and dots,” said Discovery Digital’s group operating officer Colin Decker, who notes that integrations are now the majority of the ads his company sells. These aren’t freebies that sneak in branding -- they’re competing for brain share in the golden age of television.