By Malcolm Dunlop, Rogers Media Television
CANADA – WHAT A GREAT COUNTRY when it comes to audience measurement. Where else would you have two competing television ratings services to measure 32 million people? Not only do we enjoy two rating services but we also enjoy two kinds of television meters, a paper diary system for many areas and, of course, PPMs in the province of Quebec.
These services cost broadcasters, advertisers and agencies millions of dollars per year. If the information is accurate, we can justify the expense as a good investment. However, I question whether these services are accurately measuring the Canada I know.
Over the past century Canada has welcomed 13.4 million immigrants. In the past eight years alone, 1.7 million have made Canada their new home. Every year over 100,000 immigrants come to Toronto. This is like the population of Guelph arriving in Toronto – but with a range of languages, backgrounds, abilities and needs that span the globe. The federal government’s own population projections to 2017 suggest that 53% of Toronto’s population will be immigrants, up from 44% in 2001.
Toronto currently has the largest and most diverse population in the country, with more than 100 languages being spoken in the city. Statistically, Chinese is the leading non-official mother tongue, followed by Italian, Portuguese, Punjabi and Tagalog. The Chinese population grew by 32% from the 1996 Census to 2001 Census. The South Asian population grew by 40% over the same period. By the 2001 Census, both groups represented half a million people each in the GTA. We know that the next census in 2006 will reflect an increasingly diverse population.
Any way you slice it, these consumers should be a marketer’s dream. They are generally young, coming to work and raise their families in their new home. They must buy food, furniture, appliances, clothing, etc. and yet may lack specific brand preferences in this new country. MapInfo’s Household Expenditure Estimates in 2004 confirm the growing spending power of the language markets. Combined, the Chinese, Italian, Portuguese and South Asian markets in the Toronto GTA represent $36 billion (yes, BILLION) in annual spending, which works out to 24% of the Toronto total.
As convincing as these statistics are, most advertising agencies rely on conventional television measurement to plan and evaluate their television advertising. This takes us back to the pressing need for accurate television measurement.
This has become a hot issue in the U.S., so maybe we can learn from their experience. OMNI Television invited Ms. Cardiss Collins, the former Illinois Congresswoman who led the Nielsen Media Research’s Independent Task Force on Television Measurement, to speak at the recent Innoversity Conference in Toronto. Ms. Collins, an African-American, simply wanted to see more people like herself on television and, through hard work and much lobbying, helped change the face of American television.
In 2004, Ms Collins worked with Nielsen Media Research to improve the accuracy of television measurement among the largest ethnic groups. Thanks to the efforts of the Task Force, American advertisers now have a better understanding of the African-American, Asian-American and Hispanic television viewing preferences and habits in at least three U.S. markets. Better measurement has meant an increased willingness to invest in marketing to these important markets.
We would like to see this kind of progress being made in Canada as well. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Task Force on Diversity in Television has made significant progress with its findings on the need for increased ethnocultural reflection on Canadian television. Nielsen Media Research has initiated an Advisory Committee to look at ethnic and aboriginal measurement in Canada. As Mike Leahy, President of NMR Canada stated at the Innoversity Conference, “There is no easy solution as the current system is targeted to English and French speaking Canadians.”
David Campbell, president and CEO of media buying company MBS, another panelist at the conference, confirmed that although advertisers are interested in marketing to the ethnic communities, the question is always “How do you measure the results?”
Jeff Vidler, a partner in Solutions Research Group, is in the midst of conducting proprietary market research on television viewing within ethnic communities. Not surprisingly, Vidler suggested, “People who speak a language watch television in that language.” While the results of the SRG survey will be published in early 2006, this conclusion is something we at OMNI Television have known for more than a quarter of a century.
Ultimately the only acceptable television research will be that which reflects the television viewing of all Canadians. It is up to all of us to work towards making the necessary changes to get to that result.
As Cardiss Collins said, “Diversity is good business.”
Malcolm Dunlop is vice-president, programming and marketing, Rogers Media Television.
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