BARB’s magic numbers…and meeting etiquette
Dear readers, Dominic Mills requests your trusted advice to help him prepare for a potentially awkward encounter…
OK, I’m cheating slightly with this column (in two ways actually, but read on to find the second way) by starting with the item on meeting etiquette rather than the way the headline suggests.
Readers, I need your help with this etiquette issue. In a few weeks I am meeting someone who is head of sales for a modern-day media company.
To help me prepare, I have been sent a background note describing the role.
It says they ‘cover all aspects of the revenue waterfall’.
Yes, that’s right…the ‘revenue waterfall’.
WTF? This is an entirely new one on me, and I speak as a connoisseur of stupid job titles.
When I read about the revenue waterfall I suffered an involuntary body spasm, the kind where you snort but can’t keep control over the contents of your nose.
I’ve heard of the revenue pipeline before, but waterfall moves it up a notch or two. Whereas a pipeline is man-made (and therefore perhaps a better analogy), the waterfall isn’t.
The etiquette issue is this: in the meeting, do I a) ignore it b) laugh out loud or c) sympathise?
It is the equivalent of putting a Post-it note on your forehead that says ‘I am a dickhead’. But it may not be this individual’s idea – the term could well have been dreamed up by the corp comms team looking to amuse themselves on a rainy Tuesday. [advert position=”left”]
There is some consolation: at least this individual is not ‘growing revenue’. I’m tired of this image – usually accompanied by the adverb ‘organically’ – because it suggests the farmer or gardener gently tending their crop, all green-fingers and careful pruning, whereas the reality is that your typical sales director is ripping the arse out of anything that moves. Alan Titchmarsh they are not.
But here’s the thing about the waterfall metaphor. It doesn’t bear close scrutiny. Is this individual at the bottom, or at the top? Is the waterfall a trickle or a tsunami?
And the flow of any waterfall is driven by a) the weather and b) the season, over which no-one has any control.
I can’t believe that’s what this job descriptor means to suggest.
So, your advice is really important to this meeting. Unless the person in question reads this column and cancels it.
BARB’s magic numbers
I’ve been poring over the beta figures from BARB’s Dovetail project, the one that allows multi-platform TV audience measurement, and which went live the beginning of this month.
The big headline number, according to the figures for the week ending August 30th, is 372m minutes – that being the amount of time spent watching TV live and on-demand via players, apps or on the web in that week. The week before, it was 350m minutes.
You can get all the detail here.
Now about my second, small, cheat. I am away for a few days, so I’m writing this column a few days ahead of time. By the time you read this, this week’s report will be out. Thus my calculations are a week out of date.
The 372m minutes sounds like a lot, but what does it really represent?
To put it into context, it’s between 16 and 17 minutes per household.
That’s the average number of device viewing minutes per broadband household, of which (according to Ofcom) there are about 23.7m in the UK.
Clearly, the figures cover August when viewers are still away or out and about. But to put it into the total viewing minutage that week was 84.3bn, of which 79bn was live.
That makes device viewing – incomplete though the stats are – roughly 0.5%.
Note that these are device figures, not people, although I would imagine that the vast majority of device viewing sessions are one-person only.
Now some qualifications: the figure is bound to rise, as BARB includes more players and more operating systems. I must admit the complexity of Dovetail is greater than I imagined, since BARB has to embed the right software in every version (i.e. Apple, Android, website) of every player.
It is further complicated by the fact that some players are live, and some on-demand, and so far BARB is most advanced with C4’s All 4.
But while the volumes will grow, how will the shape of the numbers change? For example, C4’s Made in Chelsea LA series was the most watched programme over the week, beating even Great British Bake Off and X-Factor.
Made in Chelsea LA apart though, the top 50 device-viewed programmes are broadly the same as those viewed live or time shifted – suggesting that device VOD is as much about catch-up as anything else.
Some of this is clearly due to the fact that, as yet, BARB BBC data is IoS only, and for ITV IoS and website. But does it suggest that live viewing, especially on mainstream channels, will continue to dominate? And does it mean that niche, youth-oriented, programmes – such as those on C4 – have been under-reported to date?
One other point of note: the vast majority of viewing appears to be from IoS devices. Is this because Android users (or at least those who use their devices to consume content) have a younger profile, and are therefore more into gaming and content snacking?
I’m told that comprehensive fused data will be available sometime next year. By this time, I hope, it would be nice to see the likes of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter join BARB.
Collectively, they make much of how their platforms could shape the future of TV, yet for some reason they choose to stay on the sidelines as far as audience measurement – an indispensable part of the TV eco-system – is concerned.
It seems odd to me: if they want to be taken seriously, and have their figures taken seriously, they need to be on-board this project.