Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Opinion

Channel 4’s head of sales helps you pick your way through the thicket of TV measurement.

There are, according to legend, three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Ironically, the origin of this statement is unclear, but it is agreed that the sentiment dates back to the late 1800s. Doubt about statistics and their expert interpreters seems not to be a recent phenomenon.

But experts help increase our understanding. They give us frameworks.  And context.

As for measurement?

Measurement makes markets work. Independently verified, commonly agreed metrics help companies communicate their progress to stakeholders and underpin investment decisions. They drive the narrative and inspire trust. Little wonder then that this most cerebral of activities can cause heated debate and occasionally lead to fundamental disagreement.

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Take TV. It used to be straightforward. Generations of execs awaited the overnights with nervous trepidation. Careers rose and fell on the information contained in an innocuous early-morning email.

But then came the streamers, which not only disrupted the viewing experience but, at least initially, also rejected existing measurement norms by refusing to make their viewing figures publicly available. Of course, businesses reserve the right to be self-interested, and it wasn’t in, say, Netflix’s interests to submit to the scrutiny of shared measurement until it told a better story for them.

And as viewing habits have changed, overnights have lost their primacy, replaced by seven-day and 28-day viewing figures, which better reflect how audiences watch in the on-demand world.

While the timeframe has expanded, these Barb figures are still one of the main ways commissioning executives judge the success of their content. They refer to the average number of people watching, minute by minute, over the course of the programme.

But Barb also offers other ways to measure a show’s success, particularly through a commercial lens.

Share of commercial impacts

In commercial TV, there’s SOCI, standing for share of commercial impacts, where one person viewing one advert equals one commercial impact.

Unlike viewing, which measures every minute viewed, SOCI represents a broadcaster’s specific percentage of the total commercial TV audience.

Advertisers and agencies use it as a bellwether measurement when deciding where to spend. Happily, Channel 4’s is up year on year;  pretty impressive in a men’s World Cup year. It’s also important because regulatory bodies, including Ofcom, model projected changes in SOCI when evaluating market shifts, such as public service broadcaster expansions, to ensure commercial operators are not unfairly disadvantaged.

Then there’s reach. Adult reach is particularly interesting to advertisers because it measures the number of unique adults who tune in to a programme or ad at least once during a specified period.

And it can be quite revealing about what people are really watching. How many people outside of TV would have guessed that Channel 4 reached more adults this year than the entire SVOD ad tier combined? At 45m in H1, that’s more than three times Netflix’s 12m, more than double Amazon Prime’s 21m and six times Disney+’s 7m.

By the way, I’ve deliberately cited adult reach figures here as that’s the commercial universe. It’s important, when considering advertising, that we don’t conflate adults with individuals, as individual reach includes children who can’t be targeted with advertising. And since you ask, yes, Channel 4’s individual reach, at +50m, is also greater than the combined reach of the SVOD ad tiers.

Understandably, more recently we’re seeing a narrative developing from new entrants that tends to focus on hours viewed rather than reach, but underestimate the broadcasters’ scale at your peril.

Take Tip Toe (pictured), a gripping drama for sure but reaching almost five times the ad tier audience of Rivals? A Woman of Substance almost double the ad tier reach of Bridgerton? 24 Hours in Police Custody almost double Clarkson’s Farm ad tier reach? All true. And here’s one last one for you – Channel 4 favourite Gogglebox reaches more adults on its own than Netflix and Disney’s ad tiers combined.

Proof, if proof were needed, that the commercial TV landscape is still dominated by commercial broadcaster content. Perhaps not so surprising after all when considering PSB content is free from the ceiling of a paywall.

Measurement, then, helps to give context. But as ever, always ensure you are comparing apples with apples. Sharing streaming stats has become part of the everyday now, but let’s not forget the scale that a broadcaster can add when offering combined reach. That’s what the experts tell us, and I, for one, trust them.

David Amodio is Channel 4 head of sales