Augmenting Audience Data with Behavioural Insights

The TV industry has a pressing need to leverage big data in a bid to improve advertising and marketing strategies if it is to halt the slide of advertising spend from TV to online.

In 2009 the UK became the first market where online advertising spend overtook spend on traditional TV spot advertising. While viewing on the main TV set remains dominant UK online viewing on PCs, tablets and mobiles only comprised 1.5% of total viewing last year (source: Thinkbox) there is no denying the changing direction, nor the assurance that media agencies feel they need to justify programmatic buys of audience profiles on digital platforms.

In contrast to the 5,000 panels used to source UK ratings by Barb, a census style measurement of billions of clicks per second is possible with digital technologies.

There are different measurements for different devices and we need to connect the dots, said Denise Turner, Chief Insight Officer for Havas Media Group, at Following the viewer: Audience tracking and measurement in the connected era, one of several IBC2014 Conference sessions where this hot topic came up.

Collecting data which combines digital with panel viewing is complicated but one that Barb has set itself to achieve in Project Dovetail. The reality is that nobody has ever delivered a data fusion of this scale and ambition anywhere in the world, Justin Sampson, CEO, told IBC. We are talking about a new fusion every single night. Inclusion in [published overnight and consolidated ratings figures] could be two years away.

Sky, which guards its viewer data fiercely, said it would beef up its ability to target advertisements across multiple platforms starting this autumn. In the session New Advertising, New Money Jamie West director of Sky Adsmart, the broadcasters targeted advertising platform, said: We can compete on a level footing with digital media that claims to be the only market that can offer addressability, reporting, targeting and understanding return on investment.

In the absence of a universal gold standard a number of players have emerged offering to bridge the gap between demographic panel metrics and digital data or to augment volumetric audience analysis with insight on behaviour. They range from companies like Amazon,TVBeat, Rovi or GfK offering technologies that aggregate a broadcaster, IPTV or pay TV operators digital feedback to serve up fresh insights and help monetise content and packaging; to start-ups focused on correlating purchased data to TV advertising, tracking conversations on social media in realtime or translating facial patterns during viewing into sets of emotional responses.

At the session Interactive Entertainment: You aint seen nothing yet Swiss company Joiz advocated eye-tracking heatmaps to gather information about how the public views online advertisements.

Such information could be used to influence production scripts and commissioning as well as giving broadcasters a better understanding that what they spend on content will appeal to audiences hearts as well as minds.

Channel 4, held up as one of the pioneering broadcasters in this field, agrees that such approaches have merit in augmenting baseline audience data. Some of these technologies give you a better idea of the context of viewing and of audience appreciation for content, said IBC speaker Sanjeevan Bala, Channel 4s Head of Data Planning and Analytics. So its not just raw viewing statistics and consolidate figures but how people feel about content. That is important for us given our public service remit since any social and political response we are able to bring about as a result of our shows is important.

While the goal may be a trading currency enabling comparative decisions across devices, just having more data does not necessarily translate into better results. We want perfect research but the starting point should be the opposite, said Turner. I am not selling to a laptop or tablet, I am selling to people and I want to connect what is happening across those devices in a practical way. Currency is a representation of the truth not the whole picture perfectly formed. So lets keep it all in perspective. TV is not dead and digital is an illusion of precision, it is not perfect.

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