In September, the Austrian TV industry will start using its upgraded Teletest audience measurement system, called Teletest 2.0, making it a global pioneer in the fusion of census-based and panel data as the basis for currency. Four years in the making, the new solution harnesses second-by-second return path data (RPD) from over 1.1 million HbbTV connected devices in combination with the existing 1,670 household Teletest panel.
The panel-plus-census fusion involves the creation of a 100,000-household synthetic panel that is representative of the Austrian population, taken from homes with HbbTV devices. This is achieved by using the original Teletest panel as the training data to create lookalike households (representative twins) – all of which will now be supplying real-time viewing data. The original panel will then be used to retrain, or recalibrate, the synthetic panel from time to time.
Comparisons of Teletest 2.0 data to Teletest data during testing have confirmed the high quality and reliability of the new data, the TELETEST Working Group (AGTT) reports.
The synthetic panel will run independently of the original Teletest panel and replace it as the currency. The use of a large synthetic panel brings several benefits to the Austrian market:
- Time-shift TV viewing data will be made available the day after broadcast, with fully measured data following after eight days. Currently the industry waits eight days for any insights.
- It is expected to increase stability and consistency when measuring smaller audiences – a challenge well understood in the age of media fragmentation. This will help reduce unjustified zero ratings and so benefit smaller and special interest channels.
- The measurement advance could make it easier for media buyers to plan for smaller target groups.
- Perhaps most importantly (because of its implications for media planning), the Teletest 2.0 data will be made available in real-time (thanks to the second-by-second exposure feedback from the HbbTV devices) for use in TV-LOAD.
TV-LOAD is an innovative tool for campaign management, planning and ad insertion that is being deployed by broadcast sales houses in Austria to enable the real-time optimization of classic linear broadcast ad breaks. Because Teletest 2.0 provides real-time audience measurement while the synthetic panel homes watch television, planners will no longer need to rely on forecasts of the expected audience and their socio-demographic. Instead, they can see the actual audience and confirmed socio-demographic.
So, while an ad break can be scheduled ahead of time based on the expected audience (still using forecasts), it can be adjusted in the minute before it airs to match the real socio-demographic of the confirmed audience. This will result in more efficient matches of advertiser campaigns to audience targets.
Virtual Minds, the adtech company owned by German broadcast sales house ProSiebenSat.1 Media, is providing the inventory and yield management, decisioning and break optimization technology that underpins TV-LOAD in the form of its Media Manager product.
The many stakeholders in this project are convinced that this represents a paradigm shift in TV planning that will make Austrian broadcasters, and television as a medium, more competitive versus global digital tech giants. The real-time curation of ad breaks for one-to-many distribution over classic broadcast networks (like terrestrial and satellite) is considered a world first, and you can read the full story about that here.
Teletest 2.0 is backed by the whole Austrian broadcast industry. AGTT includes ATV, IP Österreich, ORF, Goldbach, ServusTV and ProSiebenSat.1 PULS 4, among others. The working group collaborated with media agencies and their representative group IGMA (Association of Media Agencies, which includes Carat, Dentsu, GroupM, Havas, IPG Mediabrands, EssenceMediaCom, Omnicom Media Group, Publicis Media and many more).
Photo shows Thomas Gruber of ProSiebenSat.1 PULS 4, who is Chairman, TELETEST Working Group.
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