Gap Between Program and Commercial Audiences
The May 2010 issue of JM includes an interesting study by David Schweidel and Robert Kent (“Predictors of the Gap Between Program and Commercial Audiences: An Investigation Using Live Tuning Data”). This article showcases the advertiser’s challenges and information needs and underscores the limitations in the data currently available to the advertiser to make informed decisions about television advertising.
More specifically, the study breaks new ground in two respects. First, unlike previous work, the authors simultaneously consider program-related and commercial-related tuning. Their focus is to assess and analyze the gap between the audience exposed to programs and the audience exposed to commercials. The former reflects the popularity of the program and the latter captures ad avoidance behaviors. The authors note that the key problem advertisers face is when ad pricing is tied to program ratings. This is because programs not only differ on ratings but also vary in terms of ad avoidance audience behavior.
Second, this research uses a full television season’s worth of live tuning data (collected from digital cable set-top boxes in a major metropolitan area). The rich and longer time frame and scope of the data analyzed allow the authors to incorporate show-specific random effects. This study feature shows that programs may produce appeals or ad avoidance outcomes that are quite different from what their characteristics would suggest.
The authors recognize the limitations inherent in the live tuning approach (i.e., it only captures the potential for exposure to programming and commercials) as opposed to more hard-nosed measures of actually documented exposure or audience engagement.
Overall, given the complexity of the choices facing advertisers (to buy exposure) and networks (to sell exposure) and the real paucity of useful and actionable date to make these choices, the data and analyses reported present a new direction that both advertisers and networks will find useful. The authors note several areas in which this research stream could be advanced further.
As always, I welcome readers’ inputs and comments on this JM article.
Siva K. Balasubramanian, Web Editor, Journal of Marketing
