MRG Meeting Report: TV Appreciation

Last night’s Media Research Group meeting discussed the vexed question of whether a TV audience’s appreciation of the programme they are watching effects their appreciation of the ads shown in the breaks.

Andy Tilley presented some of Zenith Media’s research into AIs (Appreciation Indices), previously shown at the Monte Carlo conference earlier this year. The “Saturday Night, Sunday Morning” BMRB telephone research revealed that AIs (ranking programmes between 1 and 100 on an appreciation scale) could not be used as a hard currency for schedule planners. He showed graphically that it was very difficult to find any correlation between AI scores and brand recall.

Zenith had concluded that AIs were too simplistic a measure when considering the many factors at work upon the viewer. Major influences effecting recall included:

• Whether a product was new,different or unusual.
• Whether the communication of the product was unusual/different.
• Whether the actual product was of particular relevance to the consumer.
• How often the ad is shown; frequency of message. Tilley concluded that no general joint industry research was satisfactory to explain the effectiveness of an ad. and client specific studies were the only valid method. He thought that the initials AI should probably stand for “Anybody Interested?”.

Tilley had previously made the point that the trade press had placed the Zenith AI research in direct opposition to the conclusions of studies commissioned by Carat Research, but that there were actually similarities in the findings. The next speaker, Alan Copage of Carat, did certainly show a level of agreement with Tilley. Copage presented some highlights from the Carat Foretel studies (key 2 for Newsline report -28/4/93).

Two surveys were conducted; one into the quality of viewing of around 3,000 programmes which produced patterns of viewing by daypart and channel for different demographic groups, and one that measured ad recall. Attempts were then made to establish a link between appreciation patterns and recall, with very limited success, admitted Copage.

Carat agreed with Zenith that many factors were at play influencing ad recall (itself a superficial indicator but with the advantage of being measurable). However,on looking closely at the results of the research it did appear that enjoyment of a programme did have some effect on the number of ads recalled and that future research should look more closely at the relationship between the influencing factors.

The final speaker, Chris Horsley of HC Media, took a more simple approach to audience appreciation using BARB research.

He defined audience appreciation by the length of time they stayed with a programme, with 25 minutes solid viewing (for a half hour programme) seen to indicate a high level of “appreciation” for the programme. He argued that using this existing BARB data would provide a practical, low cost alternative to expensively commissioned industry research studies.

At least, he argued, BARB data is “actual”, tangible data and not reliant on interviewee memory and whim. Horsley strongly felt that the amount viewed was a good indicator of an audience’s commitment to a programme and that by not investigating this link agencies were wasting an opportunity.