NBC announced this week that it’s upping the ante on a policy it pioneered during last year’s upfront – namely, offering Toyota a guarantee of audience engagement for any show the auto giant might buy time on. Now the net says it will offer the same deal to any potential advertiser who requests it at this year’s upfront.

The announcement broke just in time to be debated by attendees at this week’s American Association of Advertising Agencies conference in Las Vegas. Their big question: How can any network make such a promise come true? The answer: by hiring a measurement biggie like NYC-HQ’d IAG Research, which has been working with NBC to develop a series of recall-based engagement norms for different types of programming.

So now what AAAA attendees are wondering is if and when pressure for other networks to follow NBC’s lead will reach critical mass.