The leading sponsors in the NASCAR Nextel Cup series pay $15 million or more a year to display their company logos and advertise their products on the cars, transporters and uniforms of the top stock car teams.

But it's not like they're buying an advertisement on television, where they know they'll get precisely 30 or 60 seconds of uninterrupted time in which to deliver their message. During a race, the Lowe's Chevy of Jimmie Johnson is visible one second, and then the camera is on Tony Stewart and his Home Depot Chevy, or Kurt Busch in the Miller Lite Dodge, or other cars and drivers.

How, then, does a sponsor measure the exposure its company and products receive from sponsoring a Nextel Cup car?

For more than 20 years, a small company in Ann Arbor, MI., Joyce Julius & Associates, has been providing answers for the racing world and its clients.

The company measures the exposure that sponsors receive on television during races and support broadcasts, and in recent years has added a wide variety of similar services. It also measures and evaluates the impact of sponsorships in television news broadcasts, highlights shows, the print media, the Internet, and at the race track itself during an event weekend "We have had a real emphasis over the years to move beyond just event broadcasts to include many other elements," said Eric Wright, vice president of research and product development for Joyce Julius & Associates.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the company focused exclusively on race telecasts, and literally had an employee sit in a booth with a stopwatch, painstakingly watching the show and timing the number of seconds each sponsor received when its logo or advertising appeared on camera during the course of a race.

"It has definitely progressed," said Wright. "We're still timing how long each brand appears clear and focused on screen, and how many times it's mentioned, but we're using better technology to do that. The new technology, such as our digital scanning system, has allowed us to be more detailed in our reporting. Now, for measuring, we can actually break down the various parts of the car, such as the hood, or the TV panel or the seat pillar, and we're doing that for all brands."

The old method of tabulating the information has been replaced by a team approach, with different people responsible for tracking different elements of exposure. But as it always has, the job still boils down to meticulously reviewing every race, and it still begins every Monday morning.

The information is compiled into the company's copyrighted Sponsor Reports, and it covers all of the sport's sponsors, whether or not they are clients. "Joyce Julius data is the industry standard and gives us a common language to use within the sport, which is a valuable tool in and of itself," said Brad Morrill, senior manager of motorsports for Best Buy, in a testimonial on the Joyce Julius website (www.joycejulius.com).

So far in 2007, the top five sponsors, in terms of exposure, are Budweiser, Lowe's Dupont, Home Depot and Miller Lite, according to the company. Through the Watkins Glen race, these companies had received broadcast exposure value that was worth from $63.1 million (Miller Lite) to $129.7 million (Budweiser) had they purchased the equivalent in television advertising on the same telecasts.

From these figures, it would appear that a $15 million major NASCAR sponsorship is still an excellent value.
Wright agrees that the casual exposure of a company's logo during a race telecast is not the same type of exposure as an advertisement, which is wholly directed toward sending an advertiser's message to a viewer.

"Some will say that the exposure can be more valuable being in a broadcast rather than in a commercial," Wright said. "We simply want to present it as a comparison. I say it is fair to compare. It wouldn't be fair to equate. But we present the values as a comparison.

"We do offer a recognitional value approach, with a weighted scale on that value measuring such things as the amount of clutter, the size of the identifying object and how much it integrates into the action that's taking place."

NASCAR fans become exposed to sponsors not only through race telecasts, but from pre-race broadcasts, news coverage, Internet exposure and a wide variety of other methods.

Those images become kind of entrenched in your mind and have a lasting value that way," Wright said. "That's why we go beyond the event broadcasts. If something happens during a race that is big enough to make it on a local sports highlights show in, say, Des Moines, you know that's going to have really good saturation across the country, and are going to be recognized by people who don't even follow the sport."