Like many of you, I have been reading and hearing a lot about how folks in the U.S these days, particularly younger ones, are using their computers to watch a lot of their video, including shows that they used to watch on their TVs. I am sure that this is true. I know a lot of folks who regularly use services like YouTube, Hulu and Boxee. I know even more folks who tell me that their children are watching a lot of video that way. However, I have always wondered whether actual Web video viewing patterns actually matched up to all of the hype surrounding the platform.

Apparently, my skepticism is warranted. On The Ad Contrarian, I read a review of Nielsen’s “Three Screen Report” for the first quarter of 2010 that highlighted a couple of really powerful data points in the report. First, as has been widely reported, TV viewing time in U.S. homes continues to increase, growing 1.3% (or an incremental 2 hours per month) year over year. During the same period, Internet video viewing time grew 5.9% (or an incremental 11 minutes) year over year.

Who would have thought the average increase in time that Americans watched television in early 2010 compared to early 2009 would be over ten times more than the average increase in time for watching Web video? Not me. I’m particularly surprised that Web video viewing only grew 5.9% over that time, when it was coming off such a small base. Web video viewing still represents less than 2% of the time that folks in the U.S. devote to consuming video.

Maybe a lot of that Web video time has shifted to mobile devices? Smartphones are exploding, and many millions of us now carry iPhones, BlackBerries, Droids, or similar phones capable of playing video. Nope. The Nielsen report tells us that there was no growth in subscriber mobile video consumption over the past year.

This is important stuff. As we all know, a lot of media and telecommunications companies, and a lot of their executives, are in the process of making some really big decisions about where they should be focusing their video resources now and in the future. If you’re a studio, do you produce short-form products for the Web and mobile? If you’re a TV network, do you push your video onto the Web to try to capture early audiences, even if this undermines the multibillion-dollar relationships that you have with cable and satellite operators? If you’re a multichannel TV operator, do you make massive investments to build or partner for a “TV Everywhere” platform, to ensure that Web-only viewers are satisfied, too?

A lot of big bets are going to be made by these companies. A lot of big risks are going to be taken. If these companies and their executives are making decisions under the impression that Web video viewing is exploding in America, and TV viewing is falling, the recent data suggests that they are wrong — and they may be in for a rude awakening when their Field of Dreams is built and no one shows up. What do you think?

(This post originally ran on MediaPostbs Online Spin on July 1, 2010.)

In a small and growing company with ambitions like Simulmedia, everyone we hire will impact the trajectory of our business and have the opportunity to bring positive change to the television media ecosystem.

Today, webre seeking applicants for several important positions.

Director, Attention Operations – As the Director, Attention Operations, you would be working on every aspect of Simulmediabs media and client service areas. B We are looking for someone to recruit, train and lead a team of media and client service professionals. You may come from an agency background or perhaps pricing and planning at a media company.B You should have a strong background in media functions. You should be comfortable with all phases of Spot TV Advertising, from research, to planning and buying, to trafficking systems, through to reporting, reconciliation, and billing.

Director, Product Marketing – The Simulmedia a⁷ Platformb” enables us to transform massive volumes of set-top box and other data into predictive insight to the effectiveness of television program promotion.B As Director, Product Marketing, you would be responsible for the launch of products that put the value of our insight into the hands of our television network customers and system operator partners.B You should be an expert on the interests and motivations of television network marketers and programmers and how they make decisions.

Attention Analyst b Simulmedia brings data-driven decision making to the art of television program promotion.B As an Attention Analyst, you would be responsible for the research required by product management, data strategy, operations, and our clients. B Media or TV experience not necessary; you may have come from Wall Street, web analytics, or even straight out of college. The experience we value is your having handled multiple projects at once and making sure deadlines are met.

Webre also seeking a Software Developer Intern for this summer.B B Over the course of the internship, you would support our Attention Operations and Attention Science teams, querying set-top-box data to advance analysis and model development.

If youbre interested in any of these positions, have a look at the complete job description on our Careers page and send your resume with a cover letter and salary history to careers@simulmedia.com.

Simulmedia is an Equal Opportunity Employer.B We offer competitive salary, benefits, vacation, stock options and a stake in our companybs success.

The New York Timesb Stuart Elliot covered NBCbs marketing tactics (a lot of radio).B San Francisco Chroniclebs Tim Goodman opined on production studiosb response to Leno, how theybll wish disaster on NBC as punishment for a strategy that marginalizes their contributions to the television ecosystem.B Fellow Jack Myersb MediaBizBlogger and media curmudgeon Charlie Warner has a three-part series on what hebs learned from the premiere.B Other outlets have relayed The Leno Showbs ratings, commented on the above commentary, and foretold further disruption as the competing networksb prime time programming comes online.

The days after a show has premiered in its new timeslot are an opportunity to observe how television viewers have adjusted their choices of what to watch.B Focusing on a particular new program, for those viewers who have chosen to tune-in, what kind of programming were they watching in the weeks leading to the premiere and how many are demonstrating loyalty and tuning in multiple times?

Looking at those viewers who tuned in to the first week of The Jay Leno Show reveals indicators of some program preferences that youbd expect and some that would surprise.B The two charts below examine the programming airing at weeknights at 10PM that the Leno audience viewed prior to the September 14 premiere.

The first chart reveals televisionbs emerging long tail.B The chart shows the percentage of the Leno audience that watched any of 650 different programs airing at 10PM on weeknights across broadcast and major cable networks in the weeks of August 31 and September 7, ranked in descending order by the percentage of the Leno that tuned-in.

Only 10 of the 650 programs attracted 5% or more of the audience that went on to view at least one episode of The Jay Leno Show during the week of September 14.B Of the 10, 9 of the programs were on NBC.

The next 30 programs each attracted 1% of more of the Leno audience.B Half of those next 30 programs aired on ABC, led by 20/20 and Primetime news programs.

The second chart examines the relative likelihood of the The Jay Leno Show audience to have tuned in to various programming in the two weeks leading to the premiere.B It shows the top 25 programs by Rating Index, a ratio of the program rating among viewers of at least one episode of The Jay Leno Show and the overall program rating.B A Rating Index value of 100 indicates that the Leno audience was no more or less likely to have viewed the program as the general viewing population.

The top 8 programs by Rating Index are, as one might expect, NBC programs.B The audience that had tended to watch NBC at 10PM continued to watch after Leno premiered.

Interesting entries in the top 25 programs by Rating Index are Bravobs Flipping Out and PBSb Great Lodges of the National Parks and Wild River: Colorado.B Leno viewers were nearly 3 times more likely than the typical viewer to have watched those programs. The Bravo entrant to this list is likely the result of cross network promotion.B The crossover of audience genre affinity to explain the connection with Leno and the PBS programming is worthy of more scrutiny.

The degree of loyalty to The Jay Leno Show is similar to observations of loyalty to other programming: low.B The chart below examines viewer loyalty to Leno at 10PM.B Of the viewers who watched any of the Leno Show during the week of September 14, a majority, 65%, tuned in to one episode.B Only 5% of Leno viewers tuned in four times in the programbs premiere week.

Audiences arrive to a program, watch some part of it, and depart likely never to return.B Networks bownb a viewing audience the same way that you bownb the breeze that comes through your homebs open window.

Viewers sampled programs before The Jay Leno Show aired at weeknights 10PM on NBC, and viewers will sample programs after the September 14 premiere.B To make the most of the rest of the Fall 2009 season, program marketers will do well toB understand which viewers have a proclivity to sample and which viewers have a proclivity to return to programs.

This idea of availability plays a key role in promotional campaigns for TV shows.B If a marketerbs message reaches people who donbt watch TV when the program is scheduled to air, there is the potential for wasted impressions and low response rates.B By focusing messaging on people who are available, marketers can improve the performance of their marketing campaigns and increase viewership for their programs.B We find that casual viewers of a program tend to be available when the program airs, and could be driven to watch additional episodes via well-placed promotions.

A previous blog post looked at program loyalty and concluded that blow loyaltyb viewers (people who watch only one episode during the season) would be ideal targets of promotion.B Most shows have large numbers of low loyalty viewers, as shown in the table below.B The implication was that these one-time watchers had attention that was bfor sale,b and that effective promotions could increase the number of episodes that they watch.

The analysis did not consider, however, whether these viewers were actually available for additional episodes.B It is hard enough to compete with the huge variety of programming available on TV.B If the low loyalty viewers tend to not even be loyal to the daypart, and tend to be doing something besides watching TV when the relevant programs air, it is likely that their response rates to promotions will be low.B In other words, itbs much easier to drag a channel surfer over to Rescue Me than to convert someone who tends to be away from the television during that time.

We looked at the availability of the low loyalty audiences of three specific programs, and in all three cases, over two-thirds of the audience was in front of the television for at least three additional episodes of the relevant program.B These low loyalty viewers have high daypart loyalty, even if their program loyalty is low.B This combination of battention for saleb and availability means that these viewers are indeed ideal targets of promotion.

Additional analysis could focus on the optimal way to reach these viewers.

As a fan of digital video recorder and on-demand technologies and an active manager of my Netflix queue, Ibve pondered the relative lack of attention that these alternate modes of television viewing garner.B Both Nielsenbs Three-Screen and the Video Consumer Mapping studies mark time-shifted and actively selected content viewing as a sliver of the attention that goes to traditional linear television.

What is it about the linear television viewing experience that is so compelling that people forego the increased control and time-efficiency afforded them by their DVRs and on-demand offerings?B In its near-future portrayal of viewersb willingness to pay the ultimate price for the perfect video entertainment, David Foster Wallacebs Infinite Jest contains insights to this question.

Published in 1996, Infinite Jest is set after the extinction of all broadcast television and the advertising it carried.B Televisions have been replaced by teleputers, or TPs, high-definition video displays with Internet connectivity and built-in read-only cartridge players.B Itbs as if Netflix has taken over the entertainment world.B Video content consumption is almost entirely on demand.B Linear TV programming b or, in the parlance of Infinite Jest, bspontaneous disseminationb – is marginalized, preferred only for major sporting events and lower-rent fitness shows.

Lurking in the background of the 1,000-page plus tome is a video of such potent entertainment value that its viewers, both accidental and active, are immediately enraptured and enslaved.B The viewers will literally choose death and dismemberment over turning away from the video.

Intrigued by the challenge posed by the virtual book club Infinite Summer, I picked up Infinite Jest as a summer reading project.B Though I had read it not long after its original publication, I wanted to review the text through a lens focused by my experience at Simulmedia and to experience the online community built around the book club.

In the passage below, Orin Incandenza, a tennis prodigy turned pro football punter, responds to a wheelchair-bound, Quebecois assassin posing as a survey-taker while another female assassin hides under his, Orinbs, hotel room bed covers.

On page 599, the fake survey-taker asks, in French-Canadian-accented English, what Orin misses.

Orinbs gaze now was up at the ceilingbs acoustic tile, the little blinking disk of the hallbs smoke detector, as if memories were always lighter than air.B The seated man stared blandly up at the throb of Orinbs internal jugular vein.B Orinbs face changed a little.B Behind him, under the blankets, the non-Swiss woman lay very calmly and patiently on her side, breathing silently into the portable O₂-mask w/ canister from the purse beside her, one hand in the purse on the Schmeisser GBF miniature machine pistol.

bI miss TV,b Orin said, looking back down.B He no longer smiled coolly.

bThe former television of commercial broadcast.b

bI do.b

bReason in several words or less, please, for the box after REASON,b displaying the board.

bOh, man.bB Orin looked back up and away at what seemed to be nothing, feeling at his jaw around the retromandibularbs much tinier and more vulnerable throb.B bSome of this may sound stupid.B I miss commercials that were louder than the programs.B I miss the phrases bOrder before midnight tonightb and bSave up to fifty percent and more.bB I miss being told things were filmed before a live studio audience.B I miss late-night anthems and shots of flags and fighter jets and leathery-faced Indian chiefs crying at litter.B I miss bSermonetteb and bEvensongb and test patterns and being told how many megahertz somethingbs transmitter was broadcasting at.bB He felt his face.B bI miss sneering at something I love.B How we used to love to gather in the checker-tiled kitchen in front of the old boxy cathode-ray Sony whose reception was sensitive to airplanes and sneer at the commercial vapidity of broadcast stuff.b

bVapid ditty,b pretending to notate.

bI miss stuff so low-denominator I could watch and know in advance what people were going to say.b

bEmotions of mastery and control and superiority.B And pleasure.b

bYou can say that again, boy.B I miss summer reruns.B I miss reruns hastily inserted to fill the intervals of writersb strikes, Actorsb Guild strikes.B I miss Jeannie, Samantha, Sam and Diane, Gilligan, Hawkeye, Hazel, Jed, all the syndicated airwave-haunters.B You know?B I miss seeing the same things over and over again.b

b&

The man tended to look up at him like people with legs look up at buildings and planes.B bYou can of course view entertainments again and again without surcease on TelEntertainment disks of storage and retrieval.b

Orinbs way of looking up as he remembered was nothing like the seated guybs way of looking up.B bBut not the same.B The choice, see.B It ruins it somehow.B With television you were subjected to repetition.B The familiarity was inflicted.B Different now.b

bInflicted.b

bI donbt think I exactly know,b Orin said, suddenly dimly stunned and sad inside.B The terrible sense as in dreams of something vital youbve forgotten to do.B The inclined headbs bald spot was freckled and tan.B bIs there a next item?b

In describing what he misses about TV, Orin describes exposure to and participation in a framework of which he feels he has a complete understanding.B He likes that his responses to blow-denominatorb programming are prescribed and predictable.B He states a preference for the familiar over the new.

When the fake survey-taker reminds Orin that he can access those familiar programs and commune with his bsyndicated airwave-hauntersb whenever he pleases through his entertainment subscription service, Orin remarks that the fact of his actively choosing the familiar disrupts his enjoyment of it.B Similar to his taking pleasure in the bad grammar and volume modulating tricks of direct response advertising, he would rather be bsubjected to repetitionb and uses the word binflictedb, connotative of pain and torture, to mark the source of his preference.

To understand why people prefer the linear feed over their DVRs and on-demand content, I think about those bemotions of mastery and control and superiorityb that broadcast TV enables in its viewers.

The changes raise the question of whether channel placement has an effect on ratings.B Do stations gain an advantage from having a lower channel number, or are channel choices so diverse and complicated to begin with that channel placement doesn’t matter?

Radio stations have long understood the value of being in the “middle of the dial,” but it is less clear whether such an effect also exists in television.B Our initial findings are ambiguous–channel location seems to matter in certain instances but not in others.

Several networks have negotiated for more favorable places in the line-up.B For example, Discovery and Discovery Kids are moving from the programming guidebs figurative continental shelf of the 100bs into adjacent spots in the shallow waters of the low 20bs.

Other networks are making room for the next cohort of high-bidders.B CNN is vacating its spot for FX at the broadcast-like channel 10 and moving down to channel 78.

For the majority of Time Warner Cable subscribers who donbt follow cable trade press, the line-up shuffle will come as a surprise.B Those unprepared viewers looking for Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network and plugging the familiar two 2bs into their remote controls are likely to experience a disruption to their lean-back experience upon finding Discovery Kids on their screens.

If the accidental viewer find herself ensnared in Discovery Kids programming and takes in a commercial pod or two, the network may count this disruption as a happy accident.B And if the accidental viewer falls fast for the Discovery Networksb brand and returns to its channels enough to be considered a loyal viewer, then the happy accident becomes part of the justification for working with the cable operator for a lower channel number.

The question is how many of these happy accidents can a network expect to gain with a lower channel number and to lose with a higher channel number.B Set top box data can help answer the question.

The figures below show how audiences with similar affinities for program genre tune in to the same program when the program appears in different places in the channel line-up.B Each figure identifies the Genre Segment analyzed, the network, the program, the date range, whether new or all episodes were considered and includes a table with the neighborhood head-end, the channel number, the average rating for the program at that channel number, and a box plot to illustrate the variability around the average rating.

For Bravobs The Fashion Show, the effect of the lower channel number on ratings is unambiguous and positive.B The Reality Watchers, the subset of all viewers who have demonstrated a proclivity for unscripted television, tune in at different rates depending on where Bravo appears in the channel line-up.B In Malibu, where Bravo appears at channel 42, new episodes of The Fashion Show score an average rating of 4.6 among the Reality Watchers.B In Riverside, where Bravo appears at channel 135, the same episodes receive an average rating of 1.0 among the same audience.

For USAbs longer running and critically acclaimed Psych, the effect of channel line-up placement is harder to detect.B The Remote Detectives, the subset of viewers with a demonstrated preference for crime dramas, tune in to new episodes of Psych at almost the same rate in Monterrey Park where USA is located at channel 8 and in Riverside where USA is located at channel 60.

Finally, for CNNbs Larry King, lower channel numbers have a positive effect on ratings, except for in Malibu with both the highest channel number at 70 and ratings among the highest.B Fake New Followers, the subset of viewers with an affinity sarcastic news programming that carries over to the real news, tune in to Larry King at higher rates in Monterey Park where CNN is located at channel 10 than in Riverside and Longbeach where CNN is located at channels 48 and 61, respectively.

I knew that I would tap into my statistical expertise at Simulmedia, but I didnbt anticipate that neuroscience would also prove applicable.

While our analyses rely on set top box data, we are willing to search outside the realm of TV, even into an area like neuroscience, to inform our understanding of the interaction between an audience and the viewing content consumed. It turns out that both set top box data and brain scans can give us information about viewersb engagement with a television program or promotion.

We are not going to join the ranks of neuromarketers any time soon. B Collecting EEG signals and brain scan measurements every time someone watches TV is unjustifiably expensive.B However, we might be able to use the relevant ideas to come up with measurable markers of attentiveness or viewing modality. B We can then use these concepts in our analysis of the set top box datasets.

A panel of experts on the brain and cinema gathered last month at the New York Academy of Sciences to draw an interdisciplinary connection between film and neuroscience. The conference raised two questionsbcan we use movies as a tool to learn something about the brain, and vice versa, can we learn something about films from neuroscience? The researchers presented some of their findings from the studies where participants watch a movie while undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scan.

Different cinematic devices activate different structures in the brain. For example, a close-up shot of an actorbs face tend to activate a part of our brain called the Fusiform Face Area (FFA).B A long aerial shot lights up our Parahippocampal Place Area (PPA).B Shots of an action being performed engage the mirror neurons in our brainsb Postcentral Sulcus.

If the same brain structure is activated at the same time in many people who collectively watch the same movie or program, we can attribute the activation to the movie response. The researchers use inter-subject correlation (ISC) as a measure of similarity of response time courses across the viewers. The greater inter-subject correlation across the entire brain can be thought of as corresponding to the greater bbrain controlb that the filmmaker has on the audience.

In this context we may compare different directing styles and cinematic devices. Alfred Hitchcock commands a much greater control of the audiencebs brain activity (as evidenced by the greater inter-subject correlation) than Andrei Tarkovsky, whose style is much more open to interpretation.

Film genres may be arranged on a continuum of their ability to elicit a uniform pattern of brain activity in the viewersbsnippets of real life shot on film, documentary, art films, Hollywood, and Propaganda films as the extreme case. This idea might be used in Simulmediabs ongoing efforts in genre classification.

We hypothesize that the programs containing more cinematic devices that are designed to guide the viewerbs perception most didactically (e.g., montage, continuity editing, close-up) and thus, trigger more intense watching and anticipation, will also have lower tune-away during the promotions and a potentially higher promotion response rate. The same principle applies to the structure of promotion itself.

The Entertainment Tonight clip below provides a good example of a structured promotion, one in which viewers are clearly and unambiguously instructed what to expect in the coming show.

On the other hand, the enclosed Nip/Tuck promotion is more open-ended, and would trigger a less uniform pattern of brain activity across viewers. Such response is also less predictable from the point of view of ratings. We will continue working on teasing out more implications for our analysis.

Disbelief and dismissal characterize many of the responses to our findings.B Citing their own and their peers’ television viewing habits, people assert the highly directed nature of their viewing and declare their loyalty to a curated selection of television programs.B With the exception of live sporting events, they engage their TiVo or cable company’s digital video recorder to record their favorite programs for time-shifted playback at their convenience.

We’re sure that people do do that.B We do that.B We’re also sure that most people watch a lot more television than just the programs to which they’re loyal.B We call this difference between all TV viewing and viewing favored programs the Loyalty Gap.

We can understand the reluctance to accept our findings on loyalty.B It’s expected and perhaps natural for our reports of low levels of loyalty to conflict with people’s view of the world.

We’re social creatures.B We need to connect with others.B Projecting our need to connect on media, we identify ourselves by the television programs we choose and seek others with similar preferences.B The challenge of identifying and connecting with others around the more solitary act of inattentive viewing keeps us from looking past our loyalty and recognizing the amount of time we spend channel surfing and sampling programs.

Data from the Video Consumer Mapping Study fits this model.B The study found that people tend to underreport the amount of television they watch.

Television viewing duration and reach is in the upper right of the graph.B From the graph, survey respondents reported viewing over 240 minutes of television daily but were observed watching around 330 minutes.

Around 90 minutes of daily television viewing are lost on our consciousness.B People watched television for those 90 minutes but have failed to include it in their estimation of the time spent watching.

With a gap of that magnitude, people’s reluctance to accept our observation of low loyalty makes more sense.B People are likely to recall viewing the programs to which they’re loyal but may tend to neglect additional time spent watching TV.

Another data point in the Video Consumer Mapping Study, one that’s affirmed by Nielsen’s Three Screen Report, conflicts with people’s reports of highly directed, DVR-intensive viewing.

The amount of time people spend watching DVR playback is dwarfed by live TV watching.B As a percentage of all TV watching, live and timeshifted, DVR playback is 5.4% in Nielsen’s study and 4.6% in the Video Consumer Mapping Study.B Put another way, according to Nielsen’s study, people watch nearly 19 times more live television than timeshifted television.

The imbalance of live to timeshifted television viewing is a stark contrast to reports of heavy DVR utilization and the implied higher degrees of program loyalty.

People are loyal to a selection of television programs, but the data indicates a Loyalty Gap.B Viewers allocate attention, sometimes without realizing it, to a lot more television programming than that to which they are loyal.

Channel surfing is essential to the television viewing experience, especially as the number of channels and the volume of programming on television explodes.B Following from the explosion of television content, viewers’ ability to discover new programs is impaired and their estimation of the opportunity costs of choosing a program is increased.

At Simulmedia, we think that certain viewers will spend less time surfing if they were better informed of program content and schedules.B We also think that, through segmenting viewers by their surfing habits, we might better identify the viewers that will surf less and tune in more after exposure to the right program promotions. B Scheduling promotions in spots that index highly for viewers likely to enter favorable surfing modes will encourage their substituting viewing time for surfing time and increase the ratings of the programs they choose.

To investigate surfing behavior further we tapped into data from Twitter, where dozens of people announce to the world that they are channel surfing every day.B Unlike traditional ratings or second-by-second set-top-box information, Twitter has rich qualitative information that reveals motivations behind viewers’ surfing.

A semantic analysis of the data revealed that the tweets could be clustered into 8 distinct channel surfing modes. Each of these modes represents a different state-of-mind, which in turn could correspond to receptivity to program promotion. The modes are listed below:

1. Anticipation - composed of people who tweeted about surfing as they waited for a program to start. For example, “channelB surfingB waiting until 3pm when ellen comes on!“.

2. Searching – composed of people who indicated that they were searching for something to watch. For example “ChannelB surfingB . looking for some good cable tv“.

3. Multi-tasking – composed of people who were doing other things besides surfing and twittering. For example “ChannelB surfingB and reading Roenick’s latest comments on how he thinks Babcock hates Cheli..“.

4. Split-attention - composed of people who distribute their attention between several programs at once. For example “ChannelB surfingB between Idol and Lakers“.

5. About to sleep - composed of people who are just biding time by channel surfing before they fall asleep. For example “channelB surfing, probably til I fall asleep.”.

6. Relaxing - composed of people who have indicated that they were in a relaxed state of mind and were channel surfing. For example “Plans fell through so chillaxing nB channelB surfing“.B

7. Bored & Awake - composed of insomniacs who are bored, and are surfing in the hope they fall asleep soon. For example “ChannelB surfingB because I can’t sleep…..”

8. Converts - composed of people who found something to watch while surfing. For example, “ChannelB surfingB and found last 15 mins of Penn State trouncing Stanford in the Championship game in women’s college#rugbyB on ESPNU“.

We’d expect viewers in different modes to respond differently to program promotion.B Of the eight surfing modes, Anticipation and Split-attention are likely the most difficult to sway with promotions.B Viewers in Anticipation mode surf to kill time before a scheduled program.B Viewers in the Split-attention mode are watching multiple channels at the same time.

On the other end of the discovery spectrum, we’d expect viewers in the Searching and Converting mode, roughly 30% of classified tweets, to be most likely to change their surfing time to watching time.B Directing promotions to viewers who are in Searching and Converting modes presents a untapped opportunity to increase ratings and also provide better media choices to these viewers.

Approaching loyalty through our personal television watching experience, we start with the programs to which we are loyal, the programs we eagerly await each week.B In light of our attitude toward those programs, we can’t help think that everybody that watches our programs is like us, that our programs’ audiences are as devoted as we are.

Extending to other programs, we think that all programs have a similarly loyal audience.B All these other programs that we’re not watching, they have their loyal audiences.B Other viewers are making dates to watch these programs and are eagerly awaiting their start times.

Dominant promotional strategy bolsters this perspective on television viewing.B Networks focus their marketing efforts on their loyal “core” audience – typically a demographic. B By concentrating their promotional arsenal in their own programming, networks endeavor to extend their core audience’s viewing to the next program.B If network’s loyal core audience is consistent and large, then the standard promotional strategy makes sense.

It turns out that we’re wrong.

Program loyalty is the exception, not the rule.B Only a minority of a program’s viewers is faithful and watches every installment.B Most of any program’s audience is just passing through.B They tune in to a program once or twice in the course of a season, and then go their merry way.B We touched on this subject in a previous post on primetime loyalty, and further analyses of individual programs have reinforced the pattern.

And if we hadn’t been looking at set top box-level viewing data, if we had analyzed per-program demographic composition in time series, we never would detected the sizeable churn in program episode viewing from week to week.B Looking at panel-based data, we would have seen the same or similarly demographically composed audience tuning in to each episode and failed to see that the larger part of a program’s ratings is attributable to transient viewers.

This makes more sense as we go beyond how we feel about our favorite programs and think through the implications of broader trends in television watching.B The fact is that we watch a lot of television.B The latest installment of Nielsen’s Three Screen Report has the average U.S. viewer watching a 151 hours of television in the home each month.B While we, personally, may watch less than the average, we recognize that we don’t dedicate all our viewing hours to programming to which we’re loyal.B We spend time surfing, sampling, and checking (and re-checking) programs we’ve heard about from friends and seen promoted.B In aggregate, our time on the hunt adds up and, from the perspective of ratings, accounts for a majority of attention to programming.

Our emotional approach to program loyalty now tempered by intellect and data, we can work though what this means for improving program promotion.B Immediately, we recognize that enticing one-time program viewers to commit another episode represents a significant ratings opportunity.B If we can find the one-time viewers that are receptive to watching again – whose attention is “for sale” – we can devise an effective promotion strategy.

At Simulmedia, we like to say “we have a segment for that”.

The fact that a program’s audience demonstrates observable differences in loyalty and in attentiveness (the volume of program minutes viewed) implies a program-specific segmentation.B We conceptualize the segmentation in the Loyalty-Attentiveness Matrix below.

a conceptual segmentation framework

This Loyalty-Attentiveness segmentation is unique for each program and independent of the Genre Segmentation we introduced last week.B Where we crafted the Genre Segmentation to explore notions of audience preference and their impact on what people watch, the Loyalty-Attentiveness Segmentation explores how people watch.

We find viewers tuning in to different numbers of a program season’s episodes.B In the matrix, the segments tuning in to more episodes find themselves in the right quadrants.B Collectively, these are the “Rooted” audience having demonstrated loyalty to the program.B The segments tuning in to fewer episode are placed in the left two quadrants.B These are “Rovers”, demonstrating less loyalty.

We also find viewers watching different volumes of program minutes.B In the matrix, the segments watching more minutes find themselves in the top two quadrants; segments watching less, in the lower two.

The Rovers with high attentiveness should be the focus of program promotion (the red box in the Matrix).B Though relatively less loyal, these are the viewers who have sampled the program with relative vigor.B Their higher degree of attentiveness to the program is a signal of their preferences.B Exposed to more program promotions, they may be more likely to return to the program for more episodes, helping the program’s ratings as they do so.