AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT

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NM3413 Audience Analysis
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• AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT

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OVERVIEW

• Research methodologies
• Rating systems
• Measurement techniques
• Measurement errors
• Online audience measurement

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Measuring Audiences

• Audience-as-Mass
• and Audience-as-Market (Target group / consumer)
• The notion of the audience is critical to the
  economic structure of profit-driven,
  advertiser-supported media.

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Audience Research and the Ratings

• Methodologies
• Survey
• Interview
• Test
• Observation

Conducts studies of consumer preferences,
desires, and exposure to a particular media text.
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Audience Research and the Ratings

• Methodologies
• Survey
• Interview
• Test
• Observation

Ratings system

• Arbitron in broadcast radio.
• Nielsen in television and cable TV ratings (and
  increasingly in online audience measurement).

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Audience Research and the Ratings

• aims to estimate the size and composition of the
  audience as clearly and accurately as possible.
• all information about audiences is meaningless
  without interpretation or judgments on behalf of
  those who gather and use this information.
• the core of the ratings system is a highly
  simplified method of counting who is in the
  audience for a particular television program at a
  particular moment.
• the ratings operationalize viewing by quantifying
  audience responses. The ratings structure
  essentially reduces audience viewing to a
  simplistic binary choice watching or not
  watching.
• Nielsen does collect quite a bit of other
  information about television viewers, such as
  demographic details (age, gender, socioeconomic
  status, education, etc.)

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Measuring Audience Viewership

• Nielsen measures viewing in four 15-minute time
  blocks. So if you have your TV set turned to a
  particular channel for a majority of that
  15-minute time period, Nielsen counts you as
  having been exposed to that particular program
  for that quarter hour block.
• Use the household as the unit of analysis

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Nielsens Measurement Techniques

1. Diaries
2. Household meters
3. People-meters
4. Portable peoplemeter (PPM)

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Nielsens Measurement Techniques

• Diaries
• Thousands of diaries are distributed by Nielsen
  to generate viewing estimates in local TV markets
  across the country. The diary is a small paper
  pamphlet that records viewing of a single TV set
  over the course of one week.
• PROS the technique provides wealth of data.
• CONS the quality of information depends upon the
  willingness of the viewer to put in a significant
  amount of work to maintain an accurate snapshot
  of viewing within the household.

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Nielsens Measurement Techniques

• Household meters
• The household meter is a small electronic box
  that sits on top of the TV and measures what
  channel the set is tuned to at any given moment.
  The box is plugged into a telephone line and the
  data are downloaded by Nielsen at the end of the
  day.
• PROS it requires no human intervention to record
  viewing and is therefore a much more reliable
  tool for generating the ratings.
• CONS any indication of who was in the room
  during viewing is missing.

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Nielsens Measurement Techniques

• 3. People-meters
• Peoplemeters are household meters with an extra
  remote control added. Using the remote, viewers
  enter a special code for themselves when they are
  in the room with the TV set. They press another
  button when they leave the room.
• PROS giving Nielsen a tally of who is watching a
  particular program.
• CONS peoplemeters have not been terribly
  effective at measuring the viewing behaviors of
  children.

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Nielsens Measurement Techniques

• 4. Portable peoplemeter (PPM)
• The PPM consists of a small device the size of a
  pager, which is worn at all times by viewers in a
  Nielsen household. Small inaudible tones,
  embedded within both television and radio
  programming, can be picked up by the PPM, which
  indicates that a person is within range of a
  particular media program.
• PROS It is nearly completely passive, requiring
  little effort on behalf of viewers, and it
  measures media exposure both inside and outside
  of the household.
• CONS still in the experimental stage.

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Important Audience Numbers and Their Computation
Number of TV HHs watching a program or
stationTotal TV HHs
Rating (R) HUT Share Gross
Rating Points (GRP) R1 R2 R3 ...
Rn Cost Per Thousand (CPM) Cost Per Point
(CPP)
Households Using Television Total TV HHs
Number of TV HHs watching a program or
station HUTs
Cost of Advertisement () x 1,000 Audience Size

• Cost of Advertisement (S)Audience Rating (R)

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Measurement errors

1. Sampling error
2. Conceptual error
3. Nonresponse error

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Measurement errors

• Sampling error
• The goal of any survey is to obtain the lowest
  sampling error possible to be confident of the
  estimate that you generate. The larger you sample
  size, the less likely it is that your estimate
  will deviate from the true rating for a program.

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Measurement errors

• 2. Conceptual error
• An error that results from conceptualizing the
  notion of television viewing in a particular way,
  by sampling television households instead of
  individual viewers.

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Measurement errors

• 3. Nonresponse error
• About half of all households asked to join the
  Nielsen ratings survey refuse to do so. This
  could very quickly become a major source of bias
  in the Nielsen sample, because those households
  that agree to become part of the sample may have
  inherent qualities that make their members
  different from other viewers.

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Online Audience Measures

• Internet webpages keep logs of every visitor to
  access that page, and these records, called
  server logs, allow for passive monitoring of the
  online audience.
• Server logs record the date and time of access,
  what page referred the user to that page,
  cookies stored in the web browser software
  (identification files) and the IP (internet
  protocol) address of that user, which provides
  general location information.
• More active methods of online audience
  measurement include online surveys, though these
  techniques often attract individuals who seek
  them out, thus potentially skewing the sample.
• Electronic measurement panels provide a mixture
  of active surveys and passive online metering.
• Software is installed on panelists computers
  that precisely tracks their online movements and
  communicates this information back to the
  measurement company.

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References Bencharongkij, Yubol. Audience
Analysis. Bangkok Chulalongkorn, 1991. Sullivan,
John L. Media Audiences Effects, Users,
Institutions, and Power. Los Angeles, CA Sage,
2013.