Abstract:

The paper is divided into two parts. First, recent changes with regard to the Spanish TV offer are briefly discussed, outlining the evolution from a public monopoly with only two channels of national coverage to the current situation, in which the two public TV channels have to contend with three private nationwide channels and eight regional ones. This state of affairs required a previously non-existent marketing-orientated TV management, and led to the development of different strategies, considerable changes in TV ad investment, the appearance of new forms of commercial promotion (e.g.,through TV contests), and in channel shares. It also implied the growing importance of audience measurement and declared media planning to be the crucial factor of ad efficiency. The second part of the paper is devoted to a description of a pilot research experiment in coincidental TV audience measuring, using CAH interviews. It particularly focusses on the assessment of actual brand recall relating to respondents activities (attention paid) during the commercial breaks. The interviewing procedure included questions about TV and channel switched on, recall of brands advertised in the last break of commercials and activities performed during the commercials being advertised.