Examination of Qualitative Viewing Factors for Optimal Advertising Strategies.(Brief Article)

Most advertisers agree that optimal television schedules should consider qualitative factors, such as audience involvement. This paper examines the research on qualitative factors and how to incorporate them into the optimization process. Based on existing research and a number of new studies, the authors conclude that the data point to significant differences in qualitative audience factors and that those differences are likely to impact advertising effects.

THE INTRODUCTION OF OPTIMIZERS into the TV advertising planning and buying process in the United States during 1997 and 1998 has revived discussions about the media factors that produce effective advertising. While debates about optimizers initially focused on their role in achieving higher efficiencies and effective reach (Lynch, 1997), they soon included the question: How can we incorporate qualitative viewing factors in the optimization process?

It is widely agreed that the media factors, which turn a creative message into an effective sales message, include not only quantitative factors but also

qualitative ones. Quantitative delivery factors, such as demos, reach, and purchase patterns, describe audience characteristics that affect the likelihood that the viewer is a potential buyer. The qualitative impact factors are those that describe audience behaviors which affect the likelihood that a commercial message is being seen and, hopefully, absorbed. Attention to the commercial and the program, involvement, program lilting, and lack of distractions are often mentioned as qualitative factors, which enhance commercial effectiveness. In other words, the same message, scheduled during a program that the target audience watches more attentively and likes more, can produce a greater effect.

QUALITATIVE VIEWING FACTORS AND OPTIMIZATION

While planners and buyers (as well as the sellers) have always taken data and assumptions about the quality of viewer behavior into account, they need to be quantified in order to be incorporated into most optimization systems. This has presented the question: Do we know enough about qualitative audience factors to evaluate them with the numerical precision needed to integrate them into today's optimization process?

Erwin Ephron gave one answer to this question at the 1998 ESOMAR/ARF symposium in a paper that emphasizes the need to take "exposure values" into account in order to optimize advertising effectiveness. Ephron concludes that such qualitative viewing factors "have never been measured rigorously" (1998), but he does believe that there is enough known about one such factor, namely attention, to quantify it and use it in optimization. Ephron puts forward a modeling process that applies indicators of attentiveness to ratings information in order to build a "probability of seeing a message" value for individual television programs. That modeling process considers eight factors; they are (1) Viewers pet set; (2) Ratings level; (3) Appointment viewing; (4) Captive viewing; (5) Daypart; (6) Set location; (7) Program Type; and (8) Clutter.