The Role of Trust in Audience Measurement

Audience measurement is an inexact science to say the least. That’s not to say that it is seldom “right” or that media managers can’t or shouldn’t make important decisions based on research reports. But in order for audience research to be respected, consumers of research must be able to trust the integrity of the data used to make important decisions…decisions that almost certainly have huge financial implications. Take television ratings for example. Ratings are used to set advertising rate cards and programming schedules. Each year about $60 billion of TV advertising is “allocated” based on Nielsen’s data. Meanwhile, careers of actors, writers, producers, and programmers live or die based on the “numbers” that Nielsen sells to media corporations. And for the most part, Nielsen is the only game in town. Others have tried to break into the TV ratings business, but with little success.

Not only do media companies need to have confidence in Nielsen’s data, they need to have confidence in Nielsen the company. And in recent years that has been a point of contention. It’s easy to criticize Nielsen on a variety of fronts. From sample size, to data collection methodology, to weighting and reporting, Nielsen’s measurement of the nearly 107 million US TV households (TVHHs) has been criticized, and not just by the networks who appear at the bottom of the ratings pile. One group (Don't Count Us Out) is even suggesting that there may be a conspiracy by Nielsen to under count African American and Hispanic viewers.
NOTE: Nielsen's PR counter-offensive can be found at http://www.everyonecounts.tv/

The roll out of the A/P (active/passive) meter on April 7th is just the latest attempt by Nielsen to restore confidence in their data. The A/P meters are designed to measure TV viewing taking place via digital platforms such as digital set-tops and digital video recorders, and to measure in a variety of locations…not just the home. Time will tell if the A/P meter is the solution to Nielsen’s credibility gap.

For a facinating look at the erosion of trust in Nielsen, see TV in the Dark at http://www.cjr.org/issues/2005/2/keefer-nielsen.asp

Why Statistics?

I know that some of you are struggling with statistics and perhaps are even questioning why it is important that you learn concepts that you hope to never again encounter in your professional career. But while some of you may find cleaver ways to avoid margins of error, chi-squares, t-tests, and F statistics, many of you will not. It may be helpful to look at this as yet one more skill that you bring to the employment negotiation table. Believe me, people who understand the process of designing a study, collecting and analyzing data, and drawing conclusions are in great demand…in many different employment settings. Remember, statistics are just another way of describing something that you’ve observed. Whether it is a frequency graph, a mean score, or a correlation coefficient, statistics are tools to describe something in precise detail.

That said, the group project that you’re working on is an opportunity to learn and apply some very important skills. To be successful you will need to do the following:

• understand what kind of data needs to be collected
• locate or create, and then apply, appropriate measurement tools
• organize and prepare the data that you collect
• analyze the data
• report the data
• interpret and draw conclusions from the data

The role of your “client” is to:

• help you identify a practical problem that can be solved by audience research
• assist in providing access to a population/sample
• approve of your methodology/design
• provide feedback on the usefulness of the results/conclusions

My 20 Cents about Scientific Paradigms

The social sciences have been experiencing a transformation over the past couple of decades, and depending on your "view of the world" this comes as either welcome news or cause for consternation. The transformation of which I write can be experienced by reading Tell it to the Chieftain for Sunday, March 6th. A letter by Larry Simmons of Pueblo attempts to defend CU’s Ward Churchill by claiming that Churchill’s "alternative theory" of what took place on 9/11 is,

"not only not bad scholarship—it is good scholarship and should be rewarded as such rather than villainously attacked. That it might be just as wrong as the standard, untested theory is irrelevant."

Simmons comes to this conclusion after citing Henri Poincare, a French physicist, who

"correctly told us that no matter how much we might be convinced of the validity of a given theory (hypothesis) we are incapable of setting a limit on the number of other hypotheses that explain and/or predict as well or better. This means that we cannot speak of proof of our theories. We can only tentatively accept one until someone comes along with a better one, ad infinitum" (emphasis in the original).

I’m not sure that Simmons’ argument is appropriate to the debate over Churchill’s scholarship, but allow it to serve as exemplary of the debate that is waging between the positivist and the interpretive approaches to scientific research. Positivists would argue that reality is objective and knowable, while those from the interpretive camp believe that reality exists only in the observer and can only be understood in the context of human experience. Unfortunately this can lead some to conclude that reality is unknowable and truth is personal..."your guess is as good as mine" whether we're talking about the origin of life or the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.

To bring this back to the subject of audience research, any research question about how audiences are experiencing, responding to, or interpreting mass messages will be answered differently by those who approach the question from either of these two perspectives. And while the research methods employed by both positivist and interpretive researchers are frequently interchangeable, positivism is still more comfortable with quantitative methods while interpretive approaches tends towards qualitative methods. Because a blog entry is hardly an adequate forum for a discussion of this magnitude, I'll suggest that you review the first few pages of chapter five in your textbook, especially the five major research areas; role of the researcher, design, setting, measurement instruments, and theory building.

Super-size My Audience

Once again it's superbowl time! It's the one time each year that we all gather around our TVs to cheer on our favorite television commercials while we await the main event...the half-time show. Advertisers love the superbowl...so much so that they're willing to spend $80,000 for each second of airtime. According to audience researchers it is money well spent. In this age of media segementation, it's one of the few opportunities to reach a truely "mass" audience. Approximately 35% of American adults watch the superbowl, and many watch specifically for the ads...which means less tuning out during commercial breaks.

But not all advertisers are willing to spend the superbucks necessary to secure a 30-second spot. Instead, they've taken a different approach to promoting their brand. It's called viral marketing and it works like this. Create an ad for the superbowl, but make it controversial enough that people will believe you when you decide at the last minute to yank it from the lineup. Then "leak" it to the blogsphere, the mainstream press, and anyone else you can infect. If you do it right, people will email their friends with a link to the spot on your website...driving enough traffic and interest so that network and local TV shows feature your spot in a soft news piece. Wa-la...for a mere fraction of the cost of airing your spot on the superbowl, you've managed to reach a huge audience. For example, the Airborne spot that featured two seconds of Mickey Rooney's backside...yanked. The Lincoln spot that suggested that even ministers can be tempted by a car...deep-sixed. And the Budweiser spot that poked fun at last year's "wardrobe malfunction"...ripped out the lineup. But these spots will continue to generate "buzz" because of the internet's incredible power that allows users to search, retrieve, and share content.

This raises another interesting phenomenon. Market research firms will be monitoring the "buzz" on the internet in the days following the big game. They'll be looking at blogs, discussion boards, and other social spaces to find out what worked, and what didn't. According to Intelliseek Chief Marketing Officer Pete Blackshaw, "The Web is a water cooler on steroids." Intelliseek has even assembled a panel of 40-50 Internet-savvy consumers and bloggers to live-blog the ads on Sunday. Content analysis of online discussions will allow researchers to take the pulse of superbowl ad viewers...that is, if they can find a pulse!

Blogger and blog reader demos

Because you're reading this, I suppose you could count yourself as someone who knows a few things about blogs. And if you're thinking that blogging might be an effective tool to communicate with your potential audience, you'll want to know more about the people who blog, and those who read blogs. Thankfully the Pew Interent & American Life Project has done some "blog audience research" and made the results available. According to their press release...

By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November established new contours for the blogosphere: 8 million American adults say they have created blogs; blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users; 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online; and 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs. Still, 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is.

For more, see http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp

Network News experiences Brownout

According to a report by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, out of 16,000 stories that aired on the network evening newscasts in 2003, only 131 stories, or 0.82%, were exclusively about Latinos. This was an increase from 2002 when there were 120 stories about Latinos (0.75 percent). While the portrayal of Latinos improved slightly in 2003, network coverage of Latinos remained dismal given the growth and importance of the nation’s Latino community. Latinos make up close to 14 percent of the U.S. population. Out of 639 hours of network news stories that aired in 2003 (38,325 minutes), a scant 0.63 percent (4 hours and 2 minutes) was dedicated to Latino stories. The full report, which employed content analysis (see pp. 15-17) and both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, is available from the NAHJ website. See also the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Press Release.

Welcome!

Welcome to MCCNM 425, Audience Research

For those of you unfamiliar with Blogs (aka Web Logs), this is an online publishing tool that allows for individuals or groups to easily publish on the web. This blog will allow us to interact in a public space and as such will be a compliment to our use of Blackboard. In addition to this main discussion area, note the area reserved for links to related blogs & websites.