Commercial viewing ratings are closer to reality in the U.S. with the news that Nielsen Media Research will begin offering minute-by-minute TV measurement data next fall. The expanded National Respondent Level Data File will incorporate respondent level (people meter panel member and household) viewing data for all national programming sources and will flag minutes of programming with commercials. This database will include age and gender information crossed with household and respondent characteristics.
NMR has been supplying similar data in Canada for about eight years. The difference is that in Canada, the data is time-period minute-by-minute information that then allows researchers to dig down to find size of audience in minute-by-minute detail. A major complaint from Canadian advertisers and agencies is that even minute-by-minute doesn’t give a true picture of commercial viewing since commercials now run to 30-seconds or less in long pods of spots. They say data would have to be more finely diced to measure the actual viewing of a particular commercial.
In other research news out of the U.S., a new marketing research service will use the PPM (portable people meter) to get closer to consumers. The ultimate objective of the service is to provide advertisers with an enhanced ability to determine ROI for their marketing efforts.
It is being developed by VNU, the parent company of Nielsen Media Research, in partnership with PPM creator Arbitron Inc. and with the collaboration of Procter & Gamble, which will work with the two companies to ensure that the service is designed to address the need for marketers to better understand consumers and how to reach them in appealing ways.
The national marketing research service will collect media exposure via the PPM and combine it with ACNielsen purchase behaviour data. The panel of participants would voluntarily carry Arbitron’s Portable People Meter (PPM), a small, pager-like device that collects exposure to multiple media sources. Data on consumer preference and purchases for a wide range of services and products would also be collected from panelists, electronically and via surveys, with some households being part of ACNielsen’s Homescan consumer panel, which currently tracks packaged goods purchases.
If the development and pilot tests run smoothly, the service – currently dubbed Project Apollo – is expected to launch a national U.S. panel consisting of approximately 30,000 households and 70,000 people sometime in 2005.
