|
Mar 3, 2009
Group Viewing – understanding television audiences better
A
key need gap faced by media planners and advertisers is the
understanding of group television viewing within a household. While
audience measurement panels provide extensive information on the
viewing behavior of individuals, they do not provide information on the
distribution of these individuals across and within households. The
example below illustrates the conundrum.
Consider
a situation where a media planner is crafting a campaign for a target
audience of all TV viewing individuals with a targeted reach of, say,
10%. Conventional audience measurement data could throw up alternatives
with the same reach with some crucial underlying differences which may
be hidden to the planner, as follows:
|
| |
|
Program 1 |
|
Program 2 |
| |
|
|
|
|
| Total Universe Numbers: |
|
|
|
|
| Individuals |
|
500 |
|
500 |
| Households |
|
100 |
|
100 |
| |
|
|
|
|
| Numbers watching: |
|
|
|
|
| Individuals |
|
50 |
|
50 |
| Households |
|
25 |
|
15 |
| |
|
|
|
|
| Reach based on individuals (%) |
|
10 |
|
10 |
| Reach based on households (%) |
|
25 |
|
15 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The significant difference between household reach given the same individual reach may be telling for the following reasons:
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
. |
|
The
influence of household members on one person’s purchase decisions is
being increasingly recognized. This quest for “family values” in
content means that advertisers of certain categories must necessarily
look at reach at household level as well. For more details, refer to
aMap’s Oxygen titled “Getting more bang for the brand’s buck: Household
or Individual” available on http://www.audiencemap.com/oxygen/index.htm |
| |
|
|
|
| |
. |
|
At
the other end, campaigns for certain product categories / specific
objectives may want to reach as many individuals as possible while
minimizing household duplication. |
| |
|
|
|
| |
. |
|
A
very large proportion of TV owning households own a single TV implying
that prime time viewing in any one household may be bunched around a
particular program. If this be the case, growing audience fragmentation
(driven by the spate of new channel launches) will give rise very
homogenous intra-household prime time viewing while simultaneously
increasing inter-household heterogeneity. |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
The
availability of Households – in addition to individuals - as an
analysis criteria unique to aMap's TV audience measurement panel has
the promise of addressing issues in the aforesaid discussion. While
designing a media plan, households can be selected (just as for
individuals) on the basis of geography or SEC. The aMap panel also
uniquely makes available criteria such as language, durable ownership
and occupation as additional criteria to select target households.
How
can planners use this information effectively? We propose a “group
viewing index (GVI)” that can be readily calculated and reliably used.
GVI is defined as the ratio of individual TG based ratings and the
household level ratings. With values going uptil a maximum of 1.00, the
closer the value to 1.00, the greater is the collective viewing.
Is
the GVI metric consistent with conventional wisdom on patterns of
television viewing. We examine two aspects in the context of GVI.
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
A) |
|
Consider
the average half hour day part ratings for a GEC channel, for CS4+ and
for households. Since it is well understood that more people in the
household watch serials in prime time as compared with other day parts,
the value of GVI should peak in this time band while tapering off on
either side. This is indeed the case, as the graph below illustrates. |
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
| |
B) |
|
Certain
genres are more amenable to group viewing than others. A serial is more
likely to have the whole family in front of the TV set as compared
with, say, a program on fashion television. To validate this
expectation, we look at the spread of GVI across genres. The table
below gives average GRPs of the 7 genres that, between them, account
for almost the entire TV viewing. |
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| Genres (Market) |
GRPs: CS 4+ |
GRPs: CS HH |
GVI |
| English Movies & Life style (All India) |
6.9 |
18.6 |
0.368 |
| Music (All India) |
17.4 |
47.1 |
0.369 |
| English News (All India) |
6.4 |
16.4 |
0.392 |
| Sports (All India) |
8.8 |
20.9 |
0.423 |
| Hindi News (NWE) |
40.6 |
90.4 |
0.449 |
| Hindi Movies (NWE) |
60.3 |
126.3 |
0.477 |
| Mass (NWE) |
170.2 |
342.7 |
0.497 |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Again,
the distribution of the GVI index is along expected lines. The GVI of a
niche genre such as English movies and Lifestyle is significantly lower
than that of the mass genre; the GVI of the Hindi movie genre is also
lower than that of GEC but much closer to it than in the earlier case.
Clearly, the group viewing index does throw up conclusions that are consistent with basic facts about TV viewing.
If
this be the case, media planners can indeed bring about a substantial
improvement in their efforts by making the GVI an integral part of
their campaign designing and evaluation process.
|
|
|
About aMap
Founded
in 2004, Audience Measurement Analytics Ltd. (aMap) is India’s only and
the world’s largest overnight television audience measurement system.
With the latest technology and system driven procedures for collecting
and disseminating reliable and quality data, aMap's panel of TV viewing
households covers towns with 1 Lakh+ population spread all over the
country. Markets reported by aMap include those uniquely covered by it
such as Jammu, Guwahati, Bihar and Jharkhand. aMap publishes audience
measurement data on an overnight basis which is the norm in many
countries the world over.
This periodical is mailed to its
subscribers. If you have received this as a forward, then for your own
copy please write to contact@audiencemap.com. If you wish to unsubscribe from this mailer, please mail contact@audiencemap.com with "unsubscribe" as the subject.
For further information on aMap Products and Services, please call us at: Mumbai +91- 22 - 24988341, 24981578
|
