Our final installment of the TV Viewership Insights Series looks into viewers' television consumption behavior and how viewers are loyal to certain networks and specific programming on those networks.
Each graph takes a single network over the course of two weeks and examines the amount of overlap between the audiences at every half-hour period in those weeks. Overlap means that a viewer watching this network in this half hour was also watching the same network the previous half hour. If an audience member stays tuned to the same network for long periods of time, you will see this as a purple band.
Check out this video to see what we found:
Comparison of different networks gives us insight into how different types of viewers consume TV content in different ways. In the first set of charts, Bloomberg's large purple blocks were very broad, suggesting that viewers are staying tuned for very long periods, monitoring the market throughout the day. The neighboring chart shows the audience overlap for a large children’s network, and there are bright purple bands throughout the week, only turning black late at night. Children seem to be a lot like bankers, except they don’t take the weekend off.
Even loyalty comes in different flavors. In the second set of charts, the left-hand chart shows the audience overlap for a major adult entertainment network. The diagonal purple lines indicate that viewers do watch at consistent times from day to day. But notice how thin the lines are horizontally and vertically compared with the posters showing children’s or financial programming. Viewers are tuning in to this adult network regularly, but they don’t seem to be watching very long.
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The right-hand chart is an example of super-niche programming: Armenia TV, which calls itself “the largest, private and independent television operation in the Republic of Armenia.” This chart is a sea of red, showing that a lot of the same people are watching Armenia TV all week long. The network doesn’t reach a huge audience, but many of viewers seem to watch little else.
It is thus important to understand what audience you are trying to reach, what networks they are watching and their viewing habits. This research can help media planners focus their marketing spend on the networks and dayparts that are most effective at reaching their target customer and reduce waste in their marketing spend.
Posted by Deeksha Hebbar, Associate Marketing Manager for Google TV Ads
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