The television upfront as we know it is coming to an end. And this time it's for real.

Every year at this time media buyers and sellers tangle over some issue folks think will forever change the $24 billion TV ad market. Nothing comes of it. Last year it was whether buyers would negotiate on ratings that included recorded programs, which ABC was pushing, but it capitulated and the upfront played out as always.

This year the issue is commercial ratings, the push to price advertising based on ratings for the actual ads rather than the programs they run in. But once again the upfront will go forth.

But then comes next year, and then it will be different. The upfront will change, and forever. 

Commercial ratings and delayed viewing will become adopted. Both buyers and sellers will have more options, and each stands to gain in the process.

Buyers and sellers will be negotiating with several new rating currencies beyond live-only ratings--viewing when a program actually airs. They will be working with any of six streams of data from Nielsen Media Research, five of them reflecting programs recorded on digital video recorders. The six will include live ratings but also ratings for shows that aired as much as a week earlier.

While there's lots of bickering over the value of these different streams, there’s a growing consensus between buyers and sellers that they will become the new currencies in future upfronts.

As part of all that, Nielsen's new commercial ratings system will take the place of ratings for actual shows.

Beginning May 31, Nielsen will begin releasing average ratings for all commercial minutes airing within a program, though with a disclaimer that the ratings shouldn’t be used as currency through the summer. The aim is to give buyers and sellers time to evaluate the new data.

These two new data streams, delayed viewing and commercial ratings, are inextricably tied. Buyers are only interested in delayed viewing where the ad is actually seen, not where it's been zapped by a TiVo-like device, and to that end they will only work from ratings from those commercials.

“For marketers, time-shifted viewing is okay but it has to be based on commercial-minute ratings,” observes John Spiropoulos, vice president and group research director at MediaVest. “An agency that would use [program] ratings would look ridiculous.”

When it comes to the delayed viewing data, which Nielsen initiated in January, there's still no consensus on the comparative values of the six different streams as currency, and there probably won't be.

Rather there's an emerging concensus that in place of the one currency everyone agrees on, buyers and sellers will benefit from having a range of options, with some advertisers using only live-plus-same-day ratings, for example, and others using live-plus-three-day ratings, depending on how time-sensitive their message is.

For sure, the move to commercial ratings is a risky one for the networks. Commercial ratings are roughly 10 percent lower than program ratings, meaning buyers could negotiate down prices, but that balances out if the negotiations include some amount of time-shifted viewing.

“If we deal with commercial ratings and you only get credit if someone watches the commercial, it should eliminate the conversation about who watched the commercial when,” says Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development at NBC Universal. “It would give us some credit for delivering audiences beyond that live time period, which is becoming less relevant in this new environment.”

For media buyers, the new Nielsen data provides information that can be tailored to their clients, giving them the option to buy lower-cost time-delayed spots when timeliness is not an issue. That could be a huge plus.

Yet another benefit of this new emerging upfront process: The networks will work harder to keep viewers tuned in during commercials, says media consultant Erwin Ephron.

“You’ll get things like ABC attempting to integrate commercials into programs,” he says. “If it’s positive for advertisers it’s positive for the medium because advertisers are beginning to discount television and shift money.”

Of course, not everyone is happy with the emerging model for upfronts. Some buyers and sellers have been arguing there should be commercial-specific ratings based on second-by-second Nielsen data.

Nielsen doesn’t measure viewing by the second and it would take years and lots of money to beef up its sample to do it.

Some Nielsen clients also have access to minute-by-minute ratings to get closer to ratings for specific commercials.

“The reality is sometimes you have to accept what you have and be a little bit cautious about getting into totally uncharted waters,” says Wurtzel.