Why total TV measurement is an Aussie game changer
The upcoming launch of an integrated database that brings together linear TV viewing and Broadcaster Video on Demand (BVOD) is a step-change for the industry. ThinkTV CEO Kim Portrate explains why Virtual Australia is poised to become the nation’s new currency for evaluating television performance across all screens.
It’s hard to imagine it now but a little more than a decade ago, smartphones and tablets were non-existent.
In our homes, television was the source of all entertainment and just six years ago, Australians had an average of 2.2 TVs in their homes. Now the average home has 6.6 devices, many portable, making it possible to enjoy TV anywhere, any time. Bear in mind that 6.6 is an average. Some households have 10, 11 or more devices, which means a whole lot of viewing spread across multiple screens.
In order to get a better picture of what people are watching, there’s no debating the need to measure all of those screens and in 2016, this measurement journey began. Australia gained a better picture of how viewing behaviour was changing with the launch of OzTAM’s Video Player Measurement (VPM) service.
The VPM report provides daily audience data by demographic profile for Broadcaster Video on Demand (BVOD), and the numbers are impressive. Each month this year BVOD consumption has increased, breaking records left, right and centre to now average between 1.3 million and 2 million hours of content watched every day.
This huge growth in video consumption represents a tremendous opportunity for advertisers and will be turbo-charged soon with the arrival of Virtual Australia, or VOZ. Built by OzTAM and Nielsen with Regional TAM’s support, VOZ is set to become the all-screen, cross-platform planning and reporting standard for Australia’s television industry.
VOZ brings together the established, world-class TV ratings estimates from more than 20,000 viewers in OzTAM and Regional TAM panel homes and the 12 million connected devices streaming BVOD content in a single detailed database. It will enable delivery of a ‘Total TV’ audience report for the first time and provide a clearer picture of viewing on all screens.
But to really appreciate why VOZ is a game-changer for Australia, it’s important to understand the ‘Virtual’ component. VOZ creates an anonymised, synthesized profile of Australian households and 25 million ‘individuals’ using a combination of ABS population statistics; 20 years of OzTAM and Regional TAM Establishment Survey data; gold standard TV ratings estimates based on actual viewing in representative panels of homes; census level VPM data for connected device viewing; and information on household broadcast and non-broadcast video consumption from streaming TV meters installed in panel homes.
The synthesized VOZ database has numerous benefits. For a start, VOZ will offer Australia’s first de-duplicated measurement of TV content being watched, who is watching, when and how long they spend watching, as well as the screens they’re using.
Importantly, agencies and advertisers gain a more streamlined approach to planning, buying and evaluating TV content across screens, too. Currently, BVOD is planned, traded and post-analysed alongside other digital assets, while linear TV is based on the longstanding TAM framework.
Broadcast TV trading is also segregated by multiple metropolitan and regional markets. Under VOZ however, the two systems will come together, allowing marketers to map out campaigns across all broadcast channels and devices, right across the country.
VOZ will continue to evolve over time, much like OzTAM and Regional TAM’s TV ratings services have moved to meet changing viewing behaviour over the past two decades. What VOZ reports on day one will only be the start of what the service is designed to support a year or two years on.
It’s a game-changer and an exercise in future-proofing for our rapidly evolving industry.
Seems sound logic.
Hopefully having better on demand measurement will nudge the networks to improve their on demand apps too.
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is there a timeline or estimate of when this will be available?
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How does VOZ’s deduping work?
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