-[Unit 30... 'TV Advertisements: Audience measurement and data companies

Introduction

In this blogpost, I am going to look at media companies which collect and measure the number of ratings, views, sales, subscriptions, etc from audiences (viewers, readers, listeners).

Why would you measure audience views?

The purpose of measuring audience ratings is to gather data on how many people are watching a program or channel to get a estimate on the viewing retention rate on seeing how popular it is.

Also the purpose of gathering audience views find out who is watchin the programs so they can create psychographic profiles to ensure that they are appealing to the right audience as well as making sure they are following television and advertising standards and legislations.

My reflection

I feel the purpose of gathering audience ratings and measurements is effective as it allows broadcasters and advertisers to gather data to ensure that their programs are effective in attracting customers as well as appealing to their interests.

Although companies have different ways of measuring audience ratings, I feel some of the methods are not as effective because it is not reliable. The information may not be reliable because you cant gather how many people are watching the program, there may be more than 1 person per tv set. Also they only gather a average as most tv sets/households are not recorded in their listings.

NRS (national readership survey)

"The National Readership Survey provides the most authoritative and valued audience research in use for print advertising trading in the UK.

The survey covers over 250 of Britain's major newspapers and magazines, showing the size and nature of the audiences they achieve.

In a dynamic and changing digital media age, NRS will strive to evolve partnerships with the leading digital data sources providing a clearer vision of the combined total audience future." (1)

"What we do: overview

A continuous survey, 12 months of the year, 7 days a week
A large sample: 36,000 interviews a year with adults aged 15+ per year
A random sample: interviews only conducted at randomly selected addresses with randomly selected individuals
Interviews conducted in respondent's own home
The average interview takes 27 minutes
Respondents asked about their readership of a list of newspapers, newspaper supplements and magazines, as well as information about themselves " (2)

"The National Readership Survey is a joint venture company in the UK between the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) and the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA). It provides audience research for print advertising trading in the UK. The survey covers over 250 of Britain's major newspapers and magazines, showing the size and nature of the audiences they achieve. It classifies audiences in a number of ways, one of which is the NRS social grade." (3)

(Reflection) I feel that the method on how the NRS collect information may be reliable as they are gathering and conducting their own primary research. This is much more efficent as they are gathering data manually, and on a larger scale/estimate than the BARB. The only problem which may occur is that as the company collects data manually, it is more susceptable to human error and when reverting the data to computer graphs, mistakes may occur.

TGI (target group index)

"TGI enables:

Understanding of consumer attitudes, motivations, and behaviour
Comprehensive market segmentation
Accountability in marketing and communication strategies

Established in 1969, TGI sits at the very heart of the media industry, both in Great Britain and over 60 markets across the globe. What makes TGI such an indispensable tool for media owners, agencies and brand owners alike is the depth and breadth of what it reveals about consumer choices.

There are three key elements to this which together inform all principal parts of the marketing and planning mix, from initial target investigation to executing the final campaign. They are the Who, Why and How of consumer understanding." (4)

"TGI or (Target Group Index) is the longest established single source marketing and media survey in Britain and was established by BMRB in 1969. TGI has since expanded into over 60 countries with over 700,000 people being interviewed every year.

In Britain, TGI collects information from a representative sample of around 25,000 adults annually, the data is released quarterly. The survey asks questions covering consumer attitudes, motivations, media habits and purchase behaviour. TGI is a single source survey meaning respondents have to fill out the entire questionnaire, covering all question areas." (5)

(Reflection) The TGI is a important company in terms of media/audience research as it helps companies to gather information on psychographic profiles to ensure that they can create the right programs/channels at the appropriate times. They also carry out primary research all year round, which means they gather constantly updated data on customers.

BARB (broadcasters audience research board)

"The Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) is the organisation that compiles audience measurement and television ratings in the United Kingdom. It was created to replace a previous system, where the BBC and ITV companies compiled their own ratings, JICTAR. It is owned by the BBC, the ITV companies, Channel 4, Channel 5, BSkyB and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. Participating viewers have a box on top of their TV which tracks the programmes they watch."(6)

"BARB viewing data give broadcasters, advertisers and other interested parties a minute by minute breakdown of viewing at regional and national levels. This information is vital in assessing how programmes, channels or advertising campaigns have performed and provides the basis for airtime advertising trading.

In order to estimate viewing patterns across all TV households, a carefully selected panel of private homes is recruited. Each home on the panel represents, on average, about 5,000 TV homes. These panel homes are drawn from a household sample that is designed by RSMB to remain representative of all television households across the UK. This means it always encompasses the full range of demographic and TV reception variations, amongst other variables, that are found across the country and in different ITV and BBC regions." (7)

(Reflection) I feel that this method of gathering data may be unreliable as it gathers averages of information and it interprets data on a estimate of other households. This data is not accurate because other households may not be according to their listings and they are going to be generating mis-interpretting data.

Example of a rating sheet from the BARB:

Prezi presentation

This prezi was created before by myself and other class members. I decided to include it as it has relevent information for this blogpost.

This Prezi contains information on Audience Research. It includes the companies, the ARA (Audience Research & Analysis), the BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board), the RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research Ltd) and the POSTAR (Poster Audience Research).

Customer Audience Research on Prezi

Bibliography

http://www.thinkbox.tv/server/show/nav.836 (17/12/2012)