PPM's and what they do to Radio and TV ratings in Canada
Dan Say
These little (Passive people meters) boxes listen to everything
wherever you are, malls, elevators, trams, taxis etc. and record
the stations you can hear.
Ratings are changing rapidly. And you also 'record' what you are
not actively listening to, but someone else in the house or
workplace has on.
They don't measure when recharging (3 day charge) nor if the
worker doesn't move enough in the traffic jam for 20 minutes.
2 stories
---1 ----------------
Friday, October 9, 2009
PPM Primer: It Hears What You See
http://tvfeedsmyfamily.blogspot.com/2009/10/ppm-primer-it-hears-what-you-see.
html
How did House become, almost over night in it's sixth season, the most-watched
TV show in Canada? Because it probably has been for years.
It has everything to do with the new way viewers are counted in Canada. The
difference are those Portable People Meters and I have a feature all about
them up now on the Canadian Press news wire. You can find that story here at
the Toronto Star's web site.
There is, however, much more to the story and more to come as the full impact
of the PPMs unfolds in the coming weeks and months. BBM Canada president and
CEO Jim MacLeod took the time to explain the little gizmo to me in some detail
earlier this week. The PPM receptor, which weighs just 2.6 ounces, has been
tested for five years in Montreal, was eased into the rest of Canada over
summer and went full time Canada-wide Aug. 31. MacLeod says BBM has seen about
a 23% jump in broadcast viewing and about a 33% jump in specialty viewing.
The big difference? people who carry their PPMs get counted as soon as they're
within earshot of the set. Before, individuals had to "log in" all the
time--and we all know how quickly that can get old. The new PPMs hear a signal
beyond the range of human ears that is emitted every four seconds from TVs and
radios throughout the nation. If you dog's been acting funny lately, get Fido
away from the Trinitron.
Part of the story not in the article was how the panels are put together now
are also shaping the statistics. "We have a new sampling method," says
MacLeod. "We used to draw sample through a process called area probability,
which was actually knocking on doors." Now BBM uses telephone recruitment.
Macleod feels that is a more accurate way to reflect the market and stay
current.
For example, he says that some areas of Canada where there has been rapid
growth and movement--he cites Calgary and Vancouver--are now on BBM Canada's
radar. In this way, the research company may be starting to find folks who use
television differently and who weren't represented before, leading to some
audience shift.
He also says the new technology is sound based, so that if people mute
commercials, they're only recorded as watching 46-48 minutes of an hour
broadcast--not the whole thing.
The other thing is that the size of the panel is bigger--4350 homes, around
9000 individuals. Families who sign up can do this for up to three years. If
you stop wearing your PPMs and are bad little "comply-ers," you get booted out
of the sample. MacLeod says there is about a 3% turn over each month (based
mainly on the Montreal sample to date).
MacLeod also thinks that his company is finally getting a handle on the impact
of high definition programming, too. The spike in sports numbers comes in to
play there, he feels. There are just more HD sets out there, and more in the
panel.
PVR use, however, seems to have hit the wall in Canada. Moving toward 25%
penetration in the States, it is stalled out at around 10% in Canada. That may
start to change however, says MacLeod. "Before, we only captured certain
devices in the home we were wired up to--the VCR and PVR in most homes," he
says. "Lots of people have private PVRs and we didn�t used to monitor those.
Now the PPM doesn�t care where it comes from, as long as it hears the code and
knows the time stamp is different than today's time, it knows it is playback."
Canwest Global senior v.p. research Kathy Gardner says one wrinkle they're
drilling down to with the new PPM data is that panel members do not always
remember to dock them each night (so they can recharge and send data back to
BBM Canada). The suckers can run two or three days without charging, so if you
forget and dock them two or three days later, Global finds out two or three
days later that you too were watching House or Survivor. The result: that 10
day "Total" number is now a little larger than ever compared to the BBM
overnights.
How does the ad community feel about the new PPM numbers? So far the feedback
MacLeod has been hearing from his members is all positive. But what they're
really excited about, he says, is what will come next:
Tracking households and individuals throughout the day from medium to medium,
from radio to TV to the Internet. Ads for stuff you're likely to buy are gonna
follow you from your alarm clock radio to your Blackberry. Your electric
toothbrush might start beeping out messages.
Watch TV till 9 and then switch over to radio's CBC One? BBM is gonna tell
Procter & Gamble, and they're gonna sell you some Attends or Polygrip. It's
coming, watch out.
Radio is gonna feel the PPM love come December, and that should be
interesting. The Radio numbers are still counted on old diary systems. Things
are going to take a 20 year leap forward all at once in radio land. Fasten
your seat belts!
Posted by Bill Brioux at 2:25 PM
---2-----------------
New TV rating service tracking more viewersPortable People Meter finds
unmeasured viewers, boosts ratingsBill Brioux
The Canadian Press Published On Fri Oct 9 2009
http://www.thestar.
com/entertainment/television/article/707761--new-tv-rating-service-tracking-mo
re-viewers
Photos (1)
Hugh Laurie�s 'House' attracted 4.4 million viewers on Global on Sept 21.
LARRY WATSON/FOX
When a roof collapses on a house, that's one thing, but when House goes
through the roof, something curious is happening in Canada.
The Hugh Laurie medical drama returned for a sixth season Sept. 21 and drew an
astounding 4.4 million viewers on Global, double the series' average audience
last season and by far the highest rating in its history.
That's more people than were counted watching the Super Bowl, Grey Cup or
American Idol finale in Canada last season. The two-hour premiere was a pretty
good episode, but that good?
What jacked up House was the brand new way those viewers were counted. As of
Aug. 31, the national ratings gathering service BBM Canada rolled its new
Portable People Meter data right across the country.
Piloted for five years in and around Montreal, the new, improved way of
gathering TV and radio ratings has energized a battered Canadian TV industry
desperate for a little good news.
While ratings for Canadian broadcasters seemed to be trending down the last
few seasons, overnight they are higher than ever. The second episode of House
drew 3.5 million. Survivor returned to 3.1 million. Grey's Anatomy stormed
back to more than 3 million.
Even Canadian specialty networks, such as Space and Teletoon, have seen record
ratings for season premieres of shows like Stargate Universe and Star Wars:
The Clone Wars.
"Overall, I think it's a great story for television," says Kathy Gardner,
senior vice-president, strategic insight at Global's parent company Canwest.
"We're capturing viewers we weren't capturing before. They were always there,
we just couldn't grab them."
Why all of this matters is that higher audience levels generally lead to
higher ad rates, welcome news for broadcasters suffering through one of the
worst ad slumps ever.
BBM Canada president and CEO Jim MacLeod says the new PPM data is finding
viewers "we were blind to before." Part of the reason is that the new PPM
receptor � a pager-sized device weighing just 75 grams � follows people
wherever they are watching TV, including the homes of friends, neighbours, or
even into restaurants and bars. This is adding, in general, about 12 per cent
more viewers to the total audience picture, says MacLeod.
That doesn't explain all the gains, however. Overall TV ratings are up at
least 20 per cent so far this fall. Other factors include a bigger survey
panel (4,350 homes, up about a thousand and including around 9,000
individuals), more strategic neighbourhood placement (including a higher
emphasis on Canadian cities like Calgary where population growth is more rapid
and shifting) and, probably the most important factor, ease of use.
The new PPM ratings are not captured with the aid of a set-top box or anything
hooked up to a TV set or VCR. Instead, there is an encoder in each and every
radio and television transmission facility in Canada. It emits a code every
four seconds into the station's audio signal. You can't hear it, says MacLeod,
but it is there.
What does hear it is the PPM pocket device carried by every member of the
family.
It is those family numbers who have likely boosted House this fall. Gardner
suggests that show benefits from its 8 p.m. time slot, an hour when parents
and adult children are ready and present.
Under the old People Meter system, each household had a hand set with every
family member's name on the buttons. When you were in front of the TV, you
were supposed to log in.
Not everybody did all the time, says MacLeod.
PPMs aren't perfect, however. Gardner says her staff have noticed a downturn
in late night viewing that could have something to do with how the PPMs are
stored and recharged at night. That's when the device is stationed in a dock
located in a bedroom or somewhere away from TV screens.
There, the data recorded during the day is downloaded to BBM Canada while the
device is recharged.
Viewers in the habit of catching The Tonight Show or The Daily Show from bed
at night may have already docked their PPMs for the evening.
If the PPMs do not detect any motion from being worn or carried, they
automatically shut down after 20 minutes.
There has been an impact on nightly newscasts, too. While CTV and Global's
national newscasts are up � with the surprise being the boost in younger
viewers � CBC's flagship newscast The National is down this fall.
One other variable is that all programming has to be heard to be recorded by
PPMs. Some newscasts, especially all-news services such as CP24, are often on
in doctors' waiting rooms and other public places where the sound is off and
on-screen captioning is on. Those airings are left out of the new sample.
Even hockey games or other sporting events in bars are only counted if they
can be heard, although that hasn't hurt Hockey Night in Canada, which opened
the season with more than 2.5 million viewers � over twice last year's average
� for a Toronto-Montreal tilt at the start of the month.