As Screens Abound, Monitoring is Critical

Don’t believe the hype that TV is in decline. Recent research reiterates people’s engagement with TV content is stronger than ever, and many homes claim they watch more content than ever before. Why? Because they can.

Technology continues to make more content available with more flexibility. PVR penetration continues to increase, and this will accelerate with the launch this week of Internet-based FetchTV. ninemsn’s FIXPlay video player has also launched and Internet enabled TV’s are here too.

More platforms will launch increasing people’s ability to engage with TV content. And that’s a key issue for our industry – how are we going to meaningfully capture this new viewing behavior? Yes, the traditional free-to-air TV bucket is leaking eyeballs, but they aren’t going down the drain, they’re leaking into different buckets that we need to identify and capture, soon.

The measurement of TV viewing took a giant leap forward this year with the measurement of time shifted viewing and the FTA digital channels. The panel is now more representative of homes with PVR technology. But it’s not enough.

Our industry needs to figure out how we are going to capture in-home and portable viewing across all three screens (TV, computer and mobile) with a meaningful and consistent currency. And we’ll probably have a fourth screen to deal with soon as Apple’s iPad and its clones take hold.

If you think this type of viewing is too small to worry about in the short term, think again. In a recent TV viewing study that Starcom conducted with Network Ten in November, one third of 16-54 year olds said they watched TV programs accessed over the internet. More specifically, 20% of 16-54s stream TV programs over the internet, 15% download and save the programs, and 11% watch programs downloaded by others.

In terms of the three screens, 87% of people who downloaded are watching or streaming on computers, 23% are watching on TV and 7% are watching or streaming on mobile phones. Sixteen per cent of these people are watching on more than one device.

That’s a lot of viewing not currently being captured. And it’s only going to increase as more content becomes available and download speeds increase. It’s time to start evolving our TV and digital measurement currencies now. We need a people-centric or content-centric approach that captures all viewers as TV content is remediated through different platforms. And we need to understand the varying impact and engagement of viewing on different platforms – does a smaller screen necessarily result in lower engagement, and if so what impact should that have on pricing? Yes, it’s a complex issue, and it will most likely require a hybrid approach, but that’s no excuse for not starting to test potential solutions now.

It makes sense for TV ratings supplier OzTAM to take the lead on this issue. OzTAM CEO Kate Inglis-Clarke agreed this week that this was the next major issue being investigated, and that preliminary work was being done by its ratings supplier AGB/NMR on how this viewing might be captured and when the viewing was sufficient enough to justify the costs associated.

The issue is a priority for both the Media Federation of Australia and the Australian Association of National Advertisers, and both will commit the necessary resources to work with the media companies and research providers to address it. But it’s going to take time. The sooner we get started the sooner we can better understand what’s really happening with all types of viewing. There may be an additional cost, but it’s a cost we can’t afford to ignore.

Written for Fairfax, published in SMH April 16

TIME SHIFT IS JUST THE BEGINNING

As published on afr.com.au today, John Sintras, Starcom Australia's CEO comments on 'Time Shift is Just the Beginning':

December 2009 will see the most significant change in TV measurement since the introduction of PeopleMeters in 1991: the inclusion of ‘time shifted viewing’ into the TV ratings currency.

This is a positive and necessary step forward for the industry. Time shifted viewing is not new, people have been doing it for years with VCRs, but unlike other markets, that viewing has never been captured in the ratings data in Australia. The advent of digital video recorders, however, has made it easier to record far more content, making it increasingly important to measure this viewing as penetration of these devices continues to increase.

So what can we expect as this data becomes available on December 28?

Everything to do with how TV is planned, negotiated, bought, measured and covered editorially will be affected, and a huge amount of education will be required across the industry in a relatively short period of time.
- Overall ratings will increase, as ‘time shifted viewing’ has never been measured before. The TV networks will try and monetise this increase, while clients and their agencies will argue they have already been paying for these eyeballs but just couldn’t measure them until now
- The size of the ratings increase will not be consistent across genres and programs. We know from overseas experience that the amount of time shifted viewing can vary dramatically – we can expect less time shifted viewing for live sport and water cooler programs such as Masterchef
- We will now have the choice of three sets of ratings, Live (viewed within the minute), As Live (viewed with that day) and Time Shifted (viewed within a period to be agreed, but likely to be seven days)
- Everyone will need to decide which set of ratings is the most relevant for them, and to ensure that this consistent definition is used all the way through the process of briefing, strategy, negotiation, buying and measurement
- Different clients will be interested in different definitions depending on how time sensitive their advertising is, why pay for eyeballs seven days later if your sale ended mid-week?
- Different negotiation and buying strategies will emerge depending on which ratings are most valuable to each client
- Journalists and the TV networks will need to consider which ratings they publicise, and to disclose which definition they are reporting. Day after ratings reports might be timely but won’t reflect the final ratings after time shifting. Will anyone be patient enough to wait a week to report full results?
- Historical benchmarking and direct response models will be affected, as direct year-on-year comparisons won’t be possible for ‘As Live’ and ‘Time Shifted’ viewing
- Competitive analysis and Independent third party auditing will also be affected. Which definition will be used for competitive comparisons and cost benchmarking? Will comparisons be appropriate if clients are buying three different sets of ratings?
- All industry TV systems will need to be re-configured to cope with the additional data

There is a lot of work and potential confusion ahead as the industry adjusts to this expansion of the TV currency. Agencies and clients not already thinking through these issues will be caught out.

But it doesn’t stop there. How is the industry going to measure Catchup TV, IPTV (downloads/streaming) and mobile viewing as these forms of TV viewing become more common? The OzTAM currency will capture time shifting of the exact broadcast itself, not alternative versions available in other digital formats.

Ideally, we should work towards a holistic measurement system that can capture viewing in all its forms. Will OzTAM work towards incorporating this viewing into the main currency over time, or will we need a supplementary service to provide this?

The subscription TV (STV) industry has already announced a supplementary service in the form of Multiview Analytics, and it will be fascinating to see what additional data becomes available for viewing and purchase dynamics in STV homes. But what about the majority of homes that still don’t have STV?

This is huge challenge facing the industry and it will need to be addressed soon. Time shifted ratings are just the beginning, and time is running out to meet the challenges of a future already upon us.

John Sintras.