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Audience Measurement
According to Larry Gerbrandt, bigger isn’t necessarily better
for companies tracking pure viewership of programmes in an
increasingly on-demand, multiscreen age.
udience measurement
companies are
increasingly finding
themselves falling further
behind on tracking all the
different ways in which
viewers can consume video
on an ever-expanding range
of services, platforms and
devices. Content owners are
complaining that they aren’t
getting credit for all the
viewership (and if those
views can’t be tracked
advertisers won’t pay for
them). Advertisers are
frustrated by inconsistent
datasets and the lack of
industry standards.
In theory, this should be the
golden age of audience
measurement and broadcasters
and programe owners should be
collecting ever-larger streams of
cash, especially since much of the
viewing over new digital
platforms is incremental to
traditional viewing on the TV set
in the living room. All these new
devices theoretically come with
the potential to generate
enormous amounts of data about
when, where and how long the
content is consumed, who is
watching and what else they are
doing when they are watching it.
The problem often isn’t a lack of
data. It is a lack of data that plugs
into the traditional media
planning and buying software and
platforms.
The first principle of television
advertising is that advertisers buy
demographics, not people or
households. They pay a premium
for viewers age 25-49. A viewer of
almost any broadcast or cable
network in the US is currently
being barraged with a tidal wave
of commercials for drugs
designed to ease the aches, pains
and severe symptoms of a wide
range of diseases primarily
afflicting those in the 55+
demographic. The rationale is
A
simple. The Baby Boomers are the
largest demographic and we are
getting old and decrepit by the
day.
The need to provide
advertisers with third-partyvalidated data on demographics
usually results in audience
measurement companies creating
‘panels’ of video viewers whose
media consumption is intensively
tracked. These ‘panels’ or
‘samples’ are carefully selected to
represent the demographics of the
region (usually by country) and a
great deal is known about the
viewer, such as gender, age,
education and income level, home
ownership, relationship status,
number of children and so forth.
Media planners can then
match the target demographics
most likely to be interested in
their sponsor’s products and
services with the programmes
that most efficiently deliver those
targets. Data collection varies
somewhat by media but is
generally a combination of active
(such as a viewer in a Nielsen
household logging into and out of
a box when they enter and le