NewsLine Column: Storm In A Peoplemeter
Last week’s research from the London Business School caused a bit of a stir by claiming that viewers rarely watch adverts during commercial breaks. However, Kate Sergeant, consultant at Media Audits argues that as a platform for challenging the measurement systems that form the basis for buying and selling TV advertising, the research rather misses the point.
Hey, guess what? People do not always watch advertising.
Hello, London Business School and welcome to the real world of advertising.
Mark Ritson has recently made a bit of a splash, and some rather audacious claims, on the basis of his TV viewing behaviour study (sample: 8 households, duration: 1 week).
As an attempt to examine behaviours that the advertising industry has been well aware of for 40 years – what else is an opportunity to see? – it does provide us with some interesting data and qualitative direction for further study.
As a platform for challenging the value for money and pricing structure of the UK media market, it rather misses the point.
Firstly, we are dealing with a classic supply and demand market. Advertiser demand is high, because advertising – especially TV advertising – works. Supply of high quality airtime is finite, so prices stay high. Advertisers are spending millions on advertising because they want to gain the sales and brand building benefits that advertising delivers. This is neither ignorant or naďve – it is good business.
Secondly, this study attacks BARB peoplemeters – which provide the viewing audience trading currency of this market – on the basis of an incorrect assumption. BARB simply records the channel viewing, number and type of people in the room when a TV set is switched on, no more and no less. This excludes the ‘flicking’ behaviour from the study results, since channel switching is picked up electronically by the peoplemeter. BARB does not claim that the people in the room are actually watching – that would, of course, be impossible.
Advertising professionals have long acknowledged that people are free to chat, read and busy themselves during ad breaks – as they do during programmes too. This is why advertising planners have always paid close attention to the aural properties of TV ads and the potential for each execution to gain and hold attention – being first or last in break can sometimes help. None of the behaviours identified in the study will exclude all of the advertiser’s communication, especially if one ‘full attention’ exposure has already been delivered. Subsequent exposures, even if only partly attentive, will succeed in reinforcing the memory of the first.
The key findings of the study, identifying the ‘Friends Effect’ and ‘Late Night Curve’ rely on one – very atypical – household, comprising three young single women. The research finds that ‘direct’ attention to ad breaks is lower when there are 2 or more people in the room and then rises for solo viewing later on. This is an effect that should be expected in a young singles household. It is far from representative of all peak time vs all late night viewing in all households and certainly cannot be used as a stick to beat the entire advertising industry with.
This said, it is always healthy to re-examine the assumptions that we make in evaluating advertising effectiveness and this will add to a well established debate.
Finally, it is worth noting that this is not the first research study of its type – Peter Collet (Oxford University, c.1987) and George Michaelides (Howell Henry,1989) have been there before – and there will, no doubt, be others to come.
My advice would simply be that the technical assumptions and extrapolation potential for the results of such projects are considered with rather more intellectual and commercial rigour in future.
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