You Don't Watch as Much as You Think
The last Republican debate drew about 6 million viewers.
Maybe.
According to a new study, when we're asked to estimate what we watched on television or heard on the radio, we tend to overstate it. From WaPo:
Political scientists Lynn Vavreck and Michael LaCour investigated radio usage with a novel technology developed by a company called IMMI (which is now part of Arbitron). IMMI provided small cellphones to participants that also functioned as recording devices. For 10 out of every 30 seconds, the device digitally encoded the sounds in the person’s environment. The digital encoding was then matched to the radio and television programming in the participant’s media market to identify what, if any, programs they had listened to or watched. (Note that this is not an audio recording, and thus it cannot be “listened to” or “played back.”)
Vavreck and LaCour then compared how much respondents said they listened to radio to how much they actually did...
Most people who gave lower estimates were fairly accurate. For example, just about everyone who said “less than two hours” really did listen to less than two hours of radio that week (although a few listened to three or even four hours). But most of the people who gave higher estimates — between two and four hours or more than four hours — actually listened to much less radio. They overestimated their actual exposure.
And it's not just radio:
Something similar happens when people estimate their television exposure. Political scientist Markus Prior has found that the audience for the nightly network news would be 300 percent larger than it actually is if surveys were to be believed. Note that this is not because people are deliberately fudging the truth. Prior has also found that people are just making honest mistakes. We just aren’t always very good at remembering these sorts of details.
So did 6 million really watch that debate? Probably. Those ratings are derived from a complicated mix of polling, meters, and a dollop of witchcraft. (At least, that's what it's always seemed like to me, who relies on these numbers for my daily bread...)
But there are political ramifications. Candidates spend a lot of money on media. But if it's not clear what the impact is -- or if the numbers are trustworthy -- maybe they need to rethink that strategy?
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Comments :
Jan '11
Re: You Don't Watch as Much as You Think
But Rob, impressions go beyond those who catch the initial airing. I'm sure millions more have seen clips of the debate or read analyses of the debate in subsequent days. That the first run audience is relatively small doesn't mean that a particular media effort is a waste of money, they can be small but have a very long tail.
That is why advertisers pay millions of dollars to run a spot one time on the super bowl. Beyond the initial impression they get on the game is the repeated viewings and buzz that go on a couple days before and after the game. They pay a couple million for an ad, but if they do a good job they get the ad featured on the morning talk shows, written about in all the major newspapers, have several prominent websites post the spot in online competitions, etc. which makes the expensive ad buy more than worth it.
Edited on Dec 19, 2011 at 8:08amRe: You Don't Watch as Much as You Think
I've always been curious as to the accuracy of these numbers. That "witchcraft" element seems to be the key.
May '10
Re: You Don't Watch as Much as You Think
Now, Rob, you and I are from different camps in the television universe, but hasn't our united line always been that Nielsen undercounts our audience? Haven't we been harping for years about public places where TV draws uncounted eyeballs? And where are the hotel ratings?
Go stand in the corner for your heresy!
May '10
Re: You Don't Watch as Much as You Think
Well said, BThompson.
What advertisers will never be able to precisely measure is how often a TV is on and not being watched or listened to. Some people don't even turn the TV off when they leave the home.
What show did a person watch when he/she first turned the TV on? That's the most reliable statistic. If the same channel is on a couple hours later, you might have been advertising to cats.
May '10
Re: You Don't Watch as Much as You Think
That's not true. Nielsen's Peoplemeters have built-in motion sensors that monitor the room and can tell if the TV is on but nobody is watching. The meters also have sign-in and sign-out buttons for everyone in the home. While imperfect, it supplies much more reliable information than the diary methods used years ago.
Mar '11
Re: You Don't Watch as Much as You Think
I never watch the debates on television anymore. All the debates I've watched have been on the Internet (with the debate in one window, and the member feed in another... good times).
I wonder how they gauge that kind of viewership when deciding how many people watch this stuff? But as another guy said, this kind of stuff has always seemed like witchcraft to me too. My family did the Arbitron ratings thing one year, and as badly as we documented everything, how they parsed any real info from those surveys, I'll never know.
May '10
Re: You Don't Watch as Much as You Think
Nielsen does web-ratings, too. But the networks are instantly measuring how many computers are pulling the streams.
That's why Arbitron got out of the local TV measurement game years ago. But they may be getting back in with portable people meters. Every member of the home carries one on their person and it measures your interaction with electronic media both inside and outside the home.