In Terms of ROI: What Do We Know About Today's TV Ratings Currency? - Bill Harvey - MediaBizBloggers

How accurate are the Nielsen ratings That question underlies the choices that the industry faces today Hereamp8217s what we know1 CONTAMA handful of Nielsen fieldmen in the early 60s were caught selling the contact info for Nielsen panelists to TV stations and this precipitated the Harris Committee hearings in Washington The National Association of Broadcasters and the at the time three networks formed The Committee for National TV Audience measurement CONTAM to plug the dike with good research before the government stepped in to innocentlyignorantly act in the publicamp8217s interest It workedCONTAM did two very interesting and meaningful studiesa Study Number One simply showed that larger samples produced results closer to the results of the largest sample 500000 diaries amp8211 but with three networks dominating 90 share in 1963 a 2000 sample was terrific and 1000 sample was pretty darn good for measuring the diversity then existing in US TV usage behaviorb Study Number Two showed that the people not responding to the Nielsen and Arbitron TV studies tended to be lightest TV users and therefore the ampgt50 cooperation rates existing at the time results in ampgt10 inflation in ratings Today the cooperation rates are at less than half that level so the ratings inflation would probably be greater2 Hoopera This was a study done in 1968 by a commercially interested party amp8211 CE Hooper amp8211 the inventor of the Nielsen Audimeter amp8211 who in the mid1930s licensed that invention exclusively to Nielsen first for radio and then TVb What was done was a telephone coincidental amp8211 which at the time was regarded as a truth standard amp8211 before the answering machine caused that method to join all other methods as being merely arguably usable for decision making rather than a truth standard The reason the coincidental was so highly regarded was that it did not involve any substantial use of memory but merely asked what people were doing coincidentally when the phone rang a moment before and it could be assumed back then as proven by validation work that 999 of those who did not answer after six rings was probably not home therefore could not be watching TV at home at that momentc What the study found out was that people who responded to a coincidental who were then asked if they would join a meter panel provided coincidental responses which closely agreed with meter results amp8211 but the full coincidental sample findings diverged significantly from those results In other words this study proved that nonresponse bias ie failure to respond in this case refusal to accept a meter was a real effect and that it changed the ratings numbers significantlyd The study was done in New York where at the time there were six stations amp8211 the big three networks plus three independent stations amp8211 New York at the time having therefore the most fragmented audience in television One of the stations had an 115 rating in the coincidental but an 183 rating in the coincidental among those who agreed to join a meter panel That same station had a 161 rating in one of the two NY meter panels and a 145 rating in the other NY meter panels the two NY meter panels were run by Nielsen and Arbitron at the timee This finding along with other findings showed that the willingness to be in a meter panel caused a change in the ratings compared to what was considered truth at the time the coincidental The full report as published by ARF available upon request email me at billtraglobalcom if you are interestedf In other words expected truth was 115 The ratings services showed the same number to be 145 or 161 and this inflation was explained by showing that if you asked the diverse sample where the rating was 115 to join a panel those who would join retabulating their coincidental responses had given 183 The higher number for this station was a function of the preferences of the psychographic group who would join a meter panelg Among the meter agreers the coincidental ratings went up to differential degrees for five of the six stations and down for one of them The ranking of stations was changed considerably by nonresponse bias3 The Bedrock Findinga Gale Metzger in the 1980s put out a thoughtful document which came to be known as The Bedrock Principles of TV audience measurementb This document stated among other things that the variation in TV sexage ratings across programs was 80 the result of variation in household ratings with less than 20 of the variance being accounted for by who happened to be in the room viewing at the time in those homes4 In the late 90s and early 2000s TNS in the UK said that this percentage was closer to 90 rather than ampgt80 On the basis of this fact TNS argued that one ought not tax the industry a fortune for peoplemeter data but instead lower the cost of TV audience research by using set top box data to measure household tuning accounting for 90 of the sexage ratings supplemented by smaller peoplemeter samples to get the sexage inroomandviewing data accounting for the other 10 variance in the sexage ratings5 TNS BBM Arbitrona The nonprofit BBM in Canada showed in a landmark study presented at an ARF conference early this century that the first viewer in the room with a TV was pretty well measured by Nielsentype peoplemeters but that additional viewers in the room were undercountedb This made sense in that Nielsen annoys viewers in its sample by putting messages up on the screen until the first viewer announces himselfherself by keying in via their button on the peoplemeter keypad However after the first viewer there is no way for the system to know of the need to prompt again so there are no added prompts and viewers after viewer 1 may lurk with impunityc This past April a Nielsen study prompted by the MRC verified this finding with a similar Nielsen finding that on average 8 of viewers do not log in and get away with it in the current Nielsen system6 Todaya Nielsen shows that people are spending more time than ever with TV at a time when most consumers say that they are spending less time with TV due to Internet usage according to many studies including one done by IBM in 2007 Who knows Maybe Nielsen is right amp8211 maybe notb Set top box data has as many flaws as Nielsen does but at least provides the industry with a second opinion that it has needed for over half a century That cannot be a bad thingc Set top box data in the hands of the best practitioners can be a better tool than the same data in the hands of others Is that true Time will telld Can set top box data ever be proven better than Nielsen In terms of sample size yes In terms of nonresponse bias yes very few homes opt out In terms of response error yes passive no button pushing outages identifiable and can be taken out of tab In terms of covering all sets in all homes not yet but stay tunede Does TRA harbor ambitions to displace Nielsen No Not our job Our job is singlesource and our currency is designed to be used with Nielsen We add the allimportant ROI and purchaser targeting dimensions without having to resort to ratio estimation fusion or ascriptionf Should Nielsen use set top data to make its services better We have suggested that for years and still suggest it todayBill Harvey has spent over 35 years leading the way in the area of media research with special emphasis on the New Media Bill can be contacted at billtraglobalcomRead all Billamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at In Terms of ROI MediaBizBloggersFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBlogger

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In Terms of ROI: What Do We Know About Today's TV Ratings Currency? - Bill Harvey - MediaBizBloggers

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