Adwin Wibisono, Jakarta
The validity of TV ratings is a debatable topic. Much discontent has arisen over ratings reports and their affect on the quality of programs, producers, audiences and advertisers. Concerns on the matter range from questioning industry standards to suggesting the need for a new ratings provider.
The problem has two causes: the unequal spread of exposure to and familiarity with ratings data and the knowledge gap (due to this unfamiliarity) among the different stakeholders in the media.
It should be easy for media industry players, advertising and media agencies, programming and marketing staff at TV stations and to an extent the advertisers themselves, to understand ratings. These practitioners are the immediate users as the use ratings to design media plans and program schedules worth billions of rupiah.
The complications start when other stakeholders use the same data but from different perspectives.
Station owners, compared to their programming and marketing divisions, hardly have time for extensive analyses of ratings data and mostly take a couple of figures from the entire study to measure up against competitive TV stations. The weekly TV audience share and list of top programs become a display of performance. This contradicts the original objective of TV ratings data, to be an indicator of audience patterns in order to measure a business' success.
In a stark contrast, advertising agencies and advertisers, who buy advertising time on TV stations, rarely take notice of the overall audience share of particular TV stations. They focus on the proportion of their target audiences' viewing patterns using figures such as program audience share or target audience rating indexes, rather than mere program ratings.
The selection of programs in a media plan is quite impervious to overall station audience share or high-rating programs per se; that is why stations like Global TV or Metro TV continue to attract advertisers, regardless of their small audience shares and average program ratings.
Today's dominant view tends to (mis)lead program providers to believe that high ratings are the only verification of a program's selling power, resulting in program evaluations reduced to being based on ratings amongst a general population rather than to a designated target audience, its qualitative content or appeal to certain groups of consumers to sidestep. This leaves TV ratings to take the blame when they deliver bad news.
On the other side of the industry, advertising agencies and their clients are quite oblivious to this situation. Their use of ratings data in relation to a particular program goes beyond program ratings. They look into various elements, including whether the program has a significantly higher rating index (not the TV ratings figures) towards the advertiser's target audience compared to the general population; how much viewership drops during commercial breaks; or whether placing an ad in the program would increase a campaign's advertising reach and/or frequency.
This is just a half of the decision process. Other factors include financial deals with the station and the qualitative judgment on the program's content -- why viewers tune in and whether placing an ad would support the advertiser's brand image.
Therefore a program's failure to attract advertising can be attributed to several reasons aside from ratings: its content may not suit the advertiser's target audience or the program is simply not being marketed well to the advertising agency.
The TV Audience Measurement (TAM) survey is designed specifically for professionals in the media industry, i.e. media planners in advertising and media agencies and the programming and marketing departments in TV stations; and never intended for the general public. Neither is it designed to judge a program's quality, a station's business performance, nor discover why people watch certain programs.
Unfamiliar or inexperienced use of TV ratings data may lead to inaccurate assumptions, such as an over-reliance on ratings as a prerequisite for program quality or -- even worse -- that poor programming or sales are attributable to faulty methodology on the side of the TAM provider.
The media industry -- as in any other industry -- also has its standards; any research agency undertaking a TAM survey must abide to the Global Guidelines for Television Audience Measurement, the standard manual adhered by the world's media and advertising research associations. The current provider of TAM in Indonesia is AGB Nielsen, which in accordance to the manual has recently undergone a research audit.
AGB Nielsen is not the only company qualified to provide TAM. The issue lies with the standards. TV ratings from AGB Nielsen are considered the industry currency. Besides, having two TAM operators covering the same area may confuse the industry as to which figures are to be used as standard.
An alternative survey conducted outside the current covered areas, therefore, will compliment the current TAM survey covering 10 cities. Some countries, like China, have two TAM providers due to their geographic size, while others use different providers between local and national or urban and rural coverage areas.
An alternative study should be designed to uncover qualitative viewer information, for example, reasons for choosing programs or how viewers feel when watching programs or commercials; thus providing the industry with a much needed qualitative perspective to compliment TV ratings' existing quantitative data.
The market remains open for competition. The only entry barrier is the lack of the infrastructure, hardware, software, trained personnel and expertise needed to cover at least 10 major areas around the country on a continuous basis. The industry should also be ready for the cost of adapting a new set of industry standards.
The writer is a former senior research executive at AC Nielsen and now works as the director of media strategies and analysis at DDB Indonesia.
Source- Jakarta Post
The validity of TV ratings is a debatable topic. Much discontent has arisen over ratings reports and their affect on the quality of programs, producers, audiences and advertisers. Concerns on the matter range from questioning industry standards to suggesting the need for a new ratings provider.
The problem has two causes: the unequal spread of exposure to and familiarity with ratings data and the knowledge gap (due to this unfamiliarity) among the different stakeholders in the media.
It should be easy for media industry players, advertising and media agencies, programming and marketing staff at TV stations and to an extent the advertisers themselves, to understand ratings. These practitioners are the immediate users as the use ratings to design media plans and program schedules worth billions of rupiah.
The complications start when other stakeholders use the same data but from different perspectives.
Station owners, compared to their programming and marketing divisions, hardly have time for extensive analyses of ratings data and mostly take a couple of figures from the entire study to measure up against competitive TV stations. The weekly TV audience share and list of top programs become a display of performance. This contradicts the original objective of TV ratings data, to be an indicator of audience patterns in order to measure a business' success.
In a stark contrast, advertising agencies and advertisers, who buy advertising time on TV stations, rarely take notice of the overall audience share of particular TV stations. They focus on the proportion of their target audiences' viewing patterns using figures such as program audience share or target audience rating indexes, rather than mere program ratings.
The selection of programs in a media plan is quite impervious to overall station audience share or high-rating programs per se; that is why stations like Global TV or Metro TV continue to attract advertisers, regardless of their small audience shares and average program ratings.
Today's dominant view tends to (mis)lead program providers to believe that high ratings are the only verification of a program's selling power, resulting in program evaluations reduced to being based on ratings amongst a general population rather than to a designated target audience, its qualitative content or appeal to certain groups of consumers to sidestep. This leaves TV ratings to take the blame when they deliver bad news.
On the other side of the industry, advertising agencies and their clients are quite oblivious to this situation. Their use of ratings data in relation to a particular program goes beyond program ratings. They look into various elements, including whether the program has a significantly higher rating index (not the TV ratings figures) towards the advertiser's target audience compared to the general population; how much viewership drops during commercial breaks; or whether placing an ad in the program would increase a campaign's advertising reach and/or frequency.
This is just a half of the decision process. Other factors include financial deals with the station and the qualitative judgment on the program's content -- why viewers tune in and whether placing an ad would support the advertiser's brand image.
Therefore a program's failure to attract advertising can be attributed to several reasons aside from ratings: its content may not suit the advertiser's target audience or the program is simply not being marketed well to the advertising agency.
The TV Audience Measurement (TAM) survey is designed specifically for professionals in the media industry, i.e. media planners in advertising and media agencies and the programming and marketing departments in TV stations; and never intended for the general public. Neither is it designed to judge a program's quality, a station's business performance, nor discover why people watch certain programs.
Unfamiliar or inexperienced use of TV ratings data may lead to inaccurate assumptions, such as an over-reliance on ratings as a prerequisite for program quality or -- even worse -- that poor programming or sales are attributable to faulty methodology on the side of the TAM provider.
The media industry -- as in any other industry -- also has its standards; any research agency undertaking a TAM survey must abide to the Global Guidelines for Television Audience Measurement, the standard manual adhered by the world's media and advertising research associations. The current provider of TAM in Indonesia is AGB Nielsen, which in accordance to the manual has recently undergone a research audit.
AGB Nielsen is not the only company qualified to provide TAM. The issue lies with the standards. TV ratings from AGB Nielsen are considered the industry currency. Besides, having two TAM operators covering the same area may confuse the industry as to which figures are to be used as standard.
An alternative survey conducted outside the current covered areas, therefore, will compliment the current TAM survey covering 10 cities. Some countries, like China, have two TAM providers due to their geographic size, while others use different providers between local and national or urban and rural coverage areas.
An alternative study should be designed to uncover qualitative viewer information, for example, reasons for choosing programs or how viewers feel when watching programs or commercials; thus providing the industry with a much needed qualitative perspective to compliment TV ratings' existing quantitative data.
The market remains open for competition. The only entry barrier is the lack of the infrastructure, hardware, software, trained personnel and expertise needed to cover at least 10 major areas around the country on a continuous basis. The industry should also be ready for the cost of adapting a new set of industry standards.
The writer is a former senior research executive at AC Nielsen and now works as the director of media strategies and analysis at DDB Indonesia.
Source- Jakarta Post
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