June 01, 2006
360 Degrees View of TV Audience - Every Day
No Guesswork Ratings
Media buyers pay per viewer, as per an article that appeared in Advertising Age in March 2004 in response to Broadcasters Audience Research Board's (BARB) decision to start reporting on 30 second basis wherein each and every advertising spot could be measured and all the advertisements in a break had a unique rating figure. Advertisers were then required to pay for only the reached viewers. Thirty second reporting coupled with overnight ratings evoked immense interest amongst advertisers wherein Ian Lomas – Head Trading at Omnicom Group's OMD Europe is quoted as:
| “Now that we can measure overnight figures, you get clients calling up the next day and asking how many ratings they got last night. We are 10 to 15 years ahead of any other country.” |
Around the same time in India, aMap was doing just that and catching up with the best practices in Television Audience Research worldwide. aMap launched its services in August 2004 with overnight ratings data reporting on the two most important media markets in the country viz. Mumbai and Delhi.
Overnight ratings mean faster reconciliation and faster response to scheduling omissions and commissions.
Past Forward - Real Time Television Audience Ratings
Paulo Pinehiro of IMI IBOPE Brazil shared his experiences of real time ratings in a paper titled Real Time Audience The Ultimate Fight - Ten Years of Latin American Experience in 2000.
| “Approximately ten years ago IBOPE developed the first system for television audience measurement in Latin America capable of delivering ratings in real time. This service actually consists in supplying the client with a computer terminal that allows receiving updated information on ratings of the previous minute.” |
When real time ratings were introduced in Brazil and Chile, it met with stiff skepticism but slowly became an inseparable part of programming and marketing decision-making.
 Broadcasters the world over have used online and overnight ratings for decades to fine tune their programming and marketing decision-making process. Advertising agencies have used these to keep track of their campaigns. As at times the window of communication is small e.g. during festival seasons, monsoons etc. and at other time tactical decision making requires faster access to data, broadcasters and advertisers alike have been heavy supporters of investments in better and faster audience measurement technologies.
A point to note is that aMap with Telecontrol VIII meters too has the capability to give real time ratings.
Promo Planning
Some key influences that have gyrated broadcasting organizations in giving importance to promo planning are :
 • Increases in program acquisition costs
• Evolved thinking about marketing
• Heightened inter and intra media competition
• Upcoming digital delivery technologies
As GECs air tens of thousands of promotional spots every month, it becomes increasingly important to plan the promotion with the skills of a Media Planner in an agency and also monitor competition at the same time.
Though this area has not been researched extensively, Gantz and Eastman (1983) established the fact the audiences actively searched for promotional information and 73% respondents of their study agreed that program promotion had a role in deciding about entertainment program. Another study Love (1981; cited in Gantz & Eastman, 1983) found that on-air-promotion had more impact on heavy viewers than light viewers. Another study done by James R Walker in 1993, to understand the correlation between promotion frequency and program rating after taking into account lead and lead out audiences, found that program promotions worked better for returning programs rather than new programs. We have seen some instances of this in India also when a program returns for a second season backed by extensive on air promotion, gets higher than average numbers. KBC2 figures on aMap were an example of this kind of audience behaviour.
With the increase in computing power and sophisticated algorithms, it is possible to conduct such studies using existing television reporting software and the same is possible by using aMap reporter to find out the number of individuals exposed to a particular promo campaign that translated into actual viewing of the program.
A GEC Launch in May
A week prior to the launch the channel supported the program with 576 on-air-promos:
Net Result: 11.8% of the viewers (Market NWE India) who watched at least 3 promos of the program during the week prior to the launch, went ahead and watched the first episode of the program.
Please feel free to send your comments on feedback@audiencemap.com and we can assure you that we will try and respond to all your information requirements through this periodical.
Initially this periodical will be mailed to its subscribers on the first working day of every month. If you have received this as a forward, write to oxygen@audiencemap.com for your own copy.
After the break
The next issue of OXYGEN will discuss Audience Research and media planning & sales.
Periodicity
Oxygen is mailed to its subscribers on the first working day of the month. If you
wish to subscribe to this publication, write to oxygen@audiencemap.com.
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