Free TV slams News Corp newspaper readership campaign for being ‘misleading’
Industry television body Free TV Australia yesterday denounced a News Corp Australia campaign in the Advertiser/Sunday Mail promoting the size of audience and comparing it to the local audience of the highly popular Masterchef cooking show.
In a statement, Free TV claimed the ad comparing the 169,000 viewers in Adelaide who watched Masterchef Monday night with the average weekday print readership of The Adelaide Advertiser was “misleading”.
“A rookie mistake like this would see a first-year media buyer shown the door,” said Harold Mitchell, chairman of Free TV .
FreeTV said the comparison wasn’t fair because print readership surveys were based on online surveys that rely on a person’s recall as opposed to television’s people-meter data, which reports actual television viewing on a panels of Australian homes through the OzTam system.
The industry body also questioned the decision of News Corp to focus on a 12-month average weekday reach for The Adelaide Advertiser with the average audience of part of a network’s daily content for just one program. It also noted that the company omitted that the fact that TV program audiences are averages across every minute of an individual episode with the overall program reach being significantly higher.
Source: Ebquity. Click to enlarge
“While all media measurement systems aim to provide the best audience estimates they can, no other Australian media can match the robust, transparent and accountable reporting of OzTAM and Regional TAM ratings,” said Mitchell.
“Nor do any other media deliver the consistent, mass audiences that commercial television programs do, with individual prime-time shows routinely attracting hundreds of thousands of viewers in Adelaide every week.”
A News Corp spokesman declined to comment on Free TV remarks and whether the publisher stood by its claims.
Nic Christensen
agree with him – very rookie. digital has been doing this for the past decade – comparing daily TV average audience with monthly browser figures to try and migrate spend.
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Excuse my ignorance on this, but can someone explain why online newspaper readership is being measured through surveys rather than being captured by the publishers on their websites?
Even assuming that the newspapers aren’t using logins to capture this data (though God knows why they aren’t), surely they can extrapolate a rough approximation from I.P. addresses and individual computer signatures?
As I said: I don’t actually know. I’m just hoping one of the wise readers of this blog could explain.
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The Advertiser have been doing a similar thing when “reporting” the radio survey results as well. Comparing average listenership at 7.45 in the morning with an inflated generalisation of how many people might take a glance at one page of their newspaper each day. Does not stack up obviously.
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“While all media measurement systems aim to provide the best audience estimates they can, no other Australian media can match the robust, transparent and accountable reporting of OzTAM and Regional TAM ratings,” said Mitchell.
Now that the kind of statement which would see a first-year media buyer shown the door.
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Bwahahaha, when did Harold Mitchell become a comedian: “robust, transparent and accountable reporting of OzTAM and Regional TAM ratings”. Best joke I’ve heard in years!
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What is a newspaper?
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I need my audience numbers relative to how many times they can fill the MCG. Or, Olympic sized swimming pools. Then I’ll take notice.
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Aya! missing the good old days of not accountability….
no reporting back to the client. It was just a scan of the newspaper ad.
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For first year media buyer – a very good question. Answer: Staple diet of dinosaurs. Perhaps The Advertiser should relaunch as the pretender?
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Harold – it weren’t no mistake and I ain’t no rookie
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The problem is not with the paper edition – which is measured as ‘average issue readership’. As Harold points out this is most closely correlated to the episode reach of a programme rather than its average minute audience.
The problem is aggregating the Monthly Unique Audience from Nielsen Online with the print version. It’s co-mingling average issue with monthly reach.
It’s high time that the digital world walked away from its obsession with monthly data just because it reports bigger numbers. So, FreeTV you are in part right – but there are bigger fish to fry.
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@CogDissonance, it’s because the numbers would be too low if they did it like that. The UA figures do not lie!
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The old school racketeer’s are simply trying to pull the wool over the eyes of Numbskull marketeers, like they always have done. Traditional ad agencies make their buckets, upon buckets of cash from fleecing clients in production costs and taking comms from booking expensive space. Murdoch sells expensive space. The old school are trying to hold on. Smart marketeers are hurting the old school. And people actually thought that the Cannes scams were a revelation!?
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@encyclic!
Thanks. Makes sense.
side anecdote:
I recently asked Fairfax online if I could book space on Domain for particular suburbs – you know, do actually targeted marketing. The guy on the phone told me I could but when I said Dubbo, Lightning Ridge and Cobar he told me the fee was only $1200 and I’d need to spend at least $5000 in a month before he could take my booking.
I also asked if I could target particular demographics based on age and gender. He didn’t know what I was talking about.
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