OTTAWA – While all around us changes in terms of technology and available platforms – and how we all use them to consume media – the way television and radio audiences are measured is facing just as much upheaval.
During a couple of sessions at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters annual convention here in Ottawa, broadcasters, advertisers, and those charged with counting and breaking down the data, expounded on their visions of the future of ratings.
Broadcasters want better measurement – the currency they use to lure advertisers to their product. Advertisers want that too and are increasingly demanding to see their return on investment in tangible ways, rather than accepting the fact that much of their spend is broadcast to the wrong targets, due to the nature of the broadcast medium.
According to CanWest MediaWorks’ VP local sales Brad Kubota, who spoke during a Tuesday morning session called “The Ratings Revolution: A Survival Guide”, advertisers want to see a direct link between an ad campaign and product sales.
Some clients have moved away from traditional media and reallocated chunks of their budgets to the online world – not just for traditional marketing, but going as far as creating their own content for their customers’ enjoyment, which we’ve all seen on the thousands of product web sites who now do this. (Ed note: One of my favourites is this one).
For example, in a Monday session entitled “Recalculating ROI: The New Advertising Paradigm”, Molson Canada’s vice-president marketing assets, Judy Davey outlined how all of her brands have their own web presence with fun stuff for beer lovers to do – and that two of her brands have their own Facebook pages with tens of thousands of “friends.”
This move away from the traditional media has seen Davey shift a huge swath of her budget away from television. Where three years ago she spent 80% of it on TV, that part has dropped down to 50% now. “We’re shifting to other areas that are more appropriately targeted,” she said.
Today’s “Ratings Revolution” session focused more on the nuts and bolts of actually counting people – and how this is in the midst of massive change.
While Jim MacLeod, CEO of BBM Nielsen Media Research, told delegates that a request for proposals is out in the market as the company will upgrade its electronic TV ratings system by 2009 so that the audience can be counted more accurately and while in front of many other platforms, APTN’s director of marketing Sky Bridges identified an ongoing – and growing problem for those in ethnic TV game.
Right now, the vast majority of the ratings samples in Canada’s largest cities are composed of the majority – white men and women who speak either English or French, said Bridges.
MacLeod acknowledged that as minorities grow in number and importance in Canada, BBM Nielsen has a lot of work to do and that in most samples, ethnic groups comprise only about 5% of the numbers. He pointed to the large Chinese, Mandarin and Punjabi speaking populations in Vancouver and that they typically are only 5%.
Part of the issue there, added MacLeod, is getting immigrants to understand BBM is not part of the government and has nothing nefarious planned. “Once they hear ‘bureau’ and ‘measurement’, people think government,” he said. Plus, “some ethnic groups will not allow us to hook up in their homes because such (devices) were used (in their home countries) for reasons not as positive as buying and selling advertising.”
However, to gain more accurate measurement of smaller groups in Canada would simply take more money, and it’s something the industry has to decide if it can – or wants to – afford. “It will be extremely expensive,” added MacLeod, “and I think we will have to bring government to the table.”
