The Power of Fragmentation: Enabling Effective Audience Targeting on Television

• Activity Number: 245
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 4, 2014 : 2:00 PM to 2:45 PM
• Sponsor: Section for Statistical Programmers and Analysts
• Author(s): McCall McIntyre*+ and Alexandra Schorr
• Companies: Simulmedia and Simulmedia
• Keywords: television ; fragmentation

Abstract

In order to analyze light viewers, those that are more likely to result in unique reach as opposed to duplicated frequency, the authors used Nielsen's quintile framework, defining light viewers as those who made up the bottom 20% of TV viewership over the same two-week time-frame analyzed in the previous section. It is true that light viewers are more prevalent in highly rated shows, however, since more heavy viewers are also more prevalent there, the authors found that the percent of light viewers (among total viewers) is not correlated with ratings. There are a significant number of low-rated networks with high concentrations of light viewers. Almost all of these programs have niche audiences, such as Spanish programming, religious programming, and younger-skewing programming to name a few.

Niche programming where the concentration of light viewers, and the probability of extending unduplicated reach, is highest exists primarily among networks with ratings below 1. The challenge is finding the right spots at the right time.