A critical underpinning of the whole area of audience measurement is the definition that is used for â viewing. Although it is critical, it is also very difficult to get to grips with, because of the nature of the measurement process. Existing peoplemeter systems require both the adoption of a practical definition so that respondents can be given guidance on what is required of them, and also the rather more abstract definition that must inevitably be used when the always incomplete data is received from the meters. Although the people meter has been much criticized for its operational aspects, and the possibilities for incomplete or erroneous data, the proposed passive systems will also suffer similar problems of definition, without the compensation of input from the respondents. This paper makes the point that through the people meter, respondents do get the opportunity to give us some guidance of their intentions, and wonders whether in adopting a passive system any potential gains in the supposed better pick-up of viewing will not actually represent a decrease in the real reflection of viewer behavior.
This paper is in three parts, to be delivered in turn by the three speakers. First, we comment on the fact that the development of computing and of scanners has revolutionized both market and media research. We point out that the boundary between the two fields is becoming increasingly indistinct: market researchers are finding themselves more and more involved with media matters, and media researchers with marketing matters. To illustrate this, we describe two services of Nielsen Marketing Research (U.S.): the Scantrack store movement service based on retail scanning, and the Nielsen Household Panel which employs in-home scanners to record product purchasing: and we present two new practical applications of these research services which can contribute to the assessment of television advertising. The first application is experimental multimarket testing to assess the relative effectiveness of television plans, in terms of campaign testing, weight testing, or interactions with other media. The second application is a syndicated media/product service, newly introduced in the U.S., based on the Household Panel. This service, called HOME*SCAN, links product purchasing data on an aggregated (12 month) basis to media data collected from individual adult members of the Panel. Prospective television applications of the HOME*SCAN data are discussed.
This paper draws upon more than twenty years of analysis and research and discusses audiences to radio and TV in the next century. The paper begins by recollecting audience behaviour some twenty years ago and the substantial changes that have taken place since. North America, as a result of cable TV, has a television/cable system that currently provides viewers with 30 or more channels from which to choose, making it an interesting case study for other countries. The paper examines what viewers do with all this choice and shows that only traditional, major networks are used with great frequency. Viewers have historically budgeted a fixed amount of time for the electronic media and if this is unchanged in the future, then any new TV channels or services will draw their audience from existing services. However, given the specialized programming on new cable channels, it is hypothesized that the major networks, while losing some audience to new channels, are more likely to retain their viewers than smaller, specialized channels. Historical trends in viewing behaviour reveal that Canadian audiences turn to indigenous news and sports programming. Viewing trends also show that, regardless of the amount of program choice, viewers tend to watch various program categories in equal measure. The paper concludes with a discussion of what current trends might mean in a future filled with digital, interactive :, telecomputers." The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent an official position of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
The paper gives examples of new type of analyses and findings of television audience behaviour. The findings are based on analyzing respondent -level data of metered audience measurement. The YLE research department is using its own methods and procedures and therefore, even multivariate analyses of metered data are possible. Using cluster analysis reveals interesting facts beyond the rating book: there are distinct groups of viewers who in their viewing behaviour favour certain programmes, air time, or channels (or video). All of those groups vary in size and in their demographic composition. The new findings raise several research issues: how well the demographics alone can describe viewing behaviour knowing variants of viewersâ channel and programme repertoire is very important in today's competitive broadcast environment other than individual characteristics of the respondents are neglected too often; not only lifestyle or stage of life but also characteristics of the family and viewing situation (viewing in group or alone) should be included in an analysis of viewing patterns These issues have important implications for programming and scheduling in today's highly competitive broadcast environment.
Advertisers desire accountability for their media expenditures. Information Resources Inc. (IRI) findings and other studies highlight that a critical variable in explaining sales is prior brand purchase. Secondly, reaching more of the brand target tended -to generate sales increases. This paper reviews an analytic approach that attempts to integrate these two hypotheses. It does this by analyzing the potential effect of incremental brand reach and its contribution to sales. The method is to calculate reach and frequency of specific brand network TV schedules in terms of how well they reach brand users vs. non-users. The reach difference between them is Incremental Reach. Incremental reach is used to analyze how well a schedule is targeted and its estimated contribution to sales. Targeting users directly, rather than using surrogate age and sex demographics, can lead to significant increases in incremental reach and incremental sales.
The basis of a reach and frequency analysis is a count of the number of commercial spots seen by each individual in an advertising schedule. When this analysis is constructed from a people meter panel that reports on a daily basis, the obvious start point is to extract the sample of continuous reporters. This is defined to be the sample of individuals from whom a valid record of viewing was received for at least every day on which a spot in the schedule was transmitted. It is only for those individuals that we can construct a complete account of which spots they did or did not view. This was the standard approach adopted within the BARB Television Audience Measurement System in the UK prior to the launch of the new service in August 1991. However, this meant that users were forced to live with potential shortfalls in data quality and certain practical difficulties: -The continuous sample base decreases as the length of the schedule increases. A loss of 1% or 2% of the panel each day can easily compound to a loss of 10% to 20% over a four week campaign. Sampling errors would increase and there is potential for bias in the continuous sample. The demographic weighting of every continuous panel to target population profiles is not a practical option given a large number of reach and frequency analyses required on a very fast turn-around. Guest viewing could not be incorporated into the reach and frequency analysis because there was no such thing as a continuous panel of guest viewers. In fact, this would probably not be meaningful because, in the context of reach and frequency, guest viewing is really a surrogate measurement of panel members viewing in other (un-metered) households. Given the problems above, reach and frequency analyses could never be consistent with the published currency which estimated individual spot audiences from the full daily reporting samples, using a more sophisticated calculation procedure and incorporating guest viewing. The introduction of the new BARB Television Audience Measurement Panel last year created a requirement for change and an opportunity to re-visit the issues listed above.
SOFRES carried out a typology of French TV viewers called "TELETYPES", based on the audience data from the SOFRES-NIELSEN people-meter panel. Not surprisingly, this typology underscores the importance of the overall TV viewing time when segmenting French viewers into homogeneous groups. It also shows that no single factor is sufficient to describe viewing patterns: TELETYPES can be distinguished by various parameters such as viewing schedules, greater or lesser proximity to the various TV channels, the genre of the programs watched, etc. Not only do the TELETYPES data help better understand TV as a medium but they can find a valuable application in TV planning if merged with audience figures.
A new BARB Audience Measurement Service for the UK was introduced in August 1991 using larger more dispersed samples. Among its most important innovations has been disproportionate demographic sampling in favour of certain key target audience sub-groups in all but two of its 14 regional panels. This paper summarises the nature and degree of the disproportionate sampling employed. Due primarily to the regionality of terrestrial commercial television, the BARB Audience Measurement Service is based on geographically disproportionately sampled regional panels. Now that demographic disproportionate sampling is also employed within them, rim weighting procedures are used at both the regional and national level. This paper summarises the actual and effective sample sizes achieved. The Replication Study published by Arbitron in 1977 demonstrated that for a television audience measurement panel the averaging of separate estimates increases the efficiency of the result In 1980 a corresponding study of the UK measurement service was commissioned by JICTAR from AGB, and its findings endorsed those of the Arbitron study. The authors have conducted a repetition of the 1980 JICTAR study on the new BARB panel using the data for February 1992 in order to evaluate the gains and losses in efficiency due to disproportionate sampling and the possible increases in efficiency due to larger more dispersed samples, people-meter measurement, and a more fragmented market. The results show that there has been an increase in the efficiency gains as a result of averaging, which more than compensate for the small loss in efficiency from weighting. Such gains in efficiency tend to be greater for small audience categories and lower ratings.
Work has been continuing for some time now in Switzerland on an electronic Single-Source survey instrument. The procedure has been carried out gradually. This means that in 1986 the device was first tested only in the consumer field in about 25 households. The surprise result was the level of acceptance of this new method as well as the few problems associated with it. The second test in 1987 was hardly a complete Single-Source survey, but nonetheless the test families were the households of Research department members. These households were equipped with the latest version of the TELECONTROL viewer measuring device, as well as with the TELECONTROL-compatible Consumer-Media-Control device. The entire eleven-week test with specialists produced very worthwhile results and indications in terms of both software and hardware. There were no problems with installation, and technical operations, including the daily data call back, went off without, a hitch. The primary aim of this test was to try out these functions. The third test, which was also carried out in 1987 was to evaluate the level of acceptance of the Consumer-Media-Control device in average households over a longer period of time. In 18 house- holds , the dally purchase an a media usage (without TV) of all family members (a total of 48 people over the age of 13) were recorded over a six-week period. The idea of the Single-Source survey through a CMC device worked flawlessly. However, households or rather families did not (yet) appear to be ideal as a target group.
This paper sets out to argue the case for undertaking basic, benchmark research into media and marketing issues in the countries of the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. With the rapid pace of economic, political and social change in all these countries over the past few years, and the introduction of market economies, these represent a major potential marketplace which is largely unexplored in terms of basic, reliable and interpretable marketing-oriented research data. Importantly, the research which has and is being undertaken, often on a piecemeal basis, effectively imports Western European research methods and assumptions into an untested environment. This opens up the risks of misunderstanding conditions, and providing misleading information. Rather, a research-based understanding of these countries needs to built up from relatively basic principles and methods, carefully applied.
This paper addresses the subject of how to promote programmes more effectively. It is important to understand at the onset that this paper is not addressing the issue of repeat viewing to programmes or trying to understand or indeed quantify programme quality. Nor is the paper going to address the creative aspect of programme promotions. What the paper will address is how best to place a promotional campaign on television in order to efficiently expose the right audience (this may be in terms of size or profile) to maximise the viewing of the programme itself, and then evaluate how effective that promotional campaign has been.