Christoper O’Hearn

As the UAE gets ready to roll out the Arab world’s first TV Audience Measurement system, Christopher O’Hearn, GM of Emirates Media Measurement Company (EMMC), the company that heads the project, shares details of Tview with BroadcastPro ME

How long have you worked on this project?

I have been working on it for about 18 months but the project was started way before that. I should think two-and-a-half years. The National Media Council, Dr. Amina at TECOM and others at the federal level were already working on it. I came at a point where the tender had already been awarded.

How did you come to be involved with this project?

I’m a professional project manager so I was fresh from doing the English Premier League at Abu Dhabi Media, where I worked along with Karim Sarkis (former executive director of TV and Radio at ADM), who was one of the drivers of the people meter project. I was asked to project manage it technically initially. There are established standards to do these projects and it has been installed in dozens of countries so we were not inventing any wheels here. I came in initially as project manager. But in the course of that, I learnt more about the audience measurement systems and the share holders asked me to stay on and run the company through the launch phase.

Which company was awarded the TAM contract?

There are about three main companies that do this type of audience measurement in the world. We are working with Kantar Media, which is owned by WPP. Kantar does a lot of projects in Europe and has also done a massive system for China.

The operation of the panel (the households selected to participate in this project) and data gathering has been outsourced to Kantar Media.

What kind of an audience measurement system are you rolling out in the UAE?

This is an electronic audience measurement system. Obviously, there are others like IPSOS that do sampling and polling. Electronic audience measurement is a lot better because there are lots of technical issues with sampling and polling and running a panel. A lot of expertise is needed to make sure the sample is correct and the panel is managed properly. Confidentiality is also crucial. There is a firewall between the gathering and processing of data, which is Kantar’s job, and EMMC (of which I am GM), which maintains a relationship between the clients, and sells the data.

What have you named this system?

We have called it Tview. It would be Tview ratings and the Tview panel while most other countries add TAM as the suffix. So, for instance, Australia has OzTAM and India has INTAM.

Are you working with any of the other Arab government entities such as the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information (MOCI) as they are also planning a similar TAM rollout early next year?

We are working with them in terms of giving them the benefit of our experience, putting together the tender proposals and evaluating the candidates and we recognise that in the longer-term, it is in everyone’s interests to have a pan-Arab system. Even if they choose a different vendor, it’s likely that it won’t be that different because they all use the same definitions of ratings, viewings and so on.

What are some of the challenges of putting together a project for this region?

This market has some very unique elements. For instance, the diversity of this market is incredible. In most other countries, you have a reasonably homogenous majority population. We don’t have that here. In most markets, you could record the top ten or twelve channels, which would be the big legacy players like the BBC and that would give you about 60% to 70% of the viewing.

Here, we are recording 54 channels and we are not even guaranteed half the viewing because of the pan Arab nature of this market.

The single largest homogenous group is between expat Arabs and Indians but among Indians, you have the Hindi speaking lot and the Malayalam speakers that seem to form the chunk of viewers.

Among Arab expats, you will see there is considerable difference between different groups like the Levant, the Gulf and the Egyptians and so on.

Secondly, TAM systems are traditionally deployed on a country level because that’s how people tend to view it. But in the GCC, there is a common language running across different countries. For instance, you will find Indians across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other parts of the Gulf so there is a pan viewing and likewise, with Arabic. This is why we are working with Saudi Arabia because this needs to operate on a pan Arab or pan-Gulf level to actually work.

Thirdly, there are cultural issues to address because piracy is rampant with specific populations here. And we have other cultural issues such as privacy and access – there isn’t a survey culture here. It has been a big learning curve for us.

Would it be correct to call this the most state-of-the-art TAM system? Would that definition work here?

I don’t think so. We had to start somewhere and we have begun with a simpler version of audience measurement. The latest trends in the market are cross platform measurement and we are not ready for that. To progress to more complex measurement, it is good we start with more basic and established models from other markets and even with that, we have a lot of learning to do here. We have to learn to walk before we run.

So which channels are part of your 50+ list and is that selection based on some criteria?

There were several criteria for selecting channels. The share holders who put up seed capital for this project are Abu Dhabi Media, Sharjah Media, Rotana Media, Etisalat and du so obviously they wanted to include a reasonable portion of their bouquet. To make this project successful, we had to ensure we included channels like MBC, and some of the Indian and Asian channels.

The most important thing was to select channels, in which people were buying spot advertising. We have mostly free-to-air and some paid channels on that list but we have not included paid sports channels because they usually offer sponsorship, bulk buying and so on rather than spot advertising.

We would, of course, like to record all 400 channels but there is a cost per channel and so, we have had to make a trade off in terms of the most watched channels, the most significant in terms of advertising and how that is being bought. We consulted some of the media buyers, narrowed our list down to 90 channels and then narrowed it down even further to the must-have channels.

Since then, we have added some more and have made the barriers to adding channels very low. So Sky News Arabia, for instance, said it wanted to be added to the list and it’s relatively cheap to add a channel. We want to encourage people to come to us and have their channels included.

How much does it cost to be included in this?

The startup fee for a channel is only US $ 2000 and there’s an annual subscription on top of that. The minimum starting level is about $12,000 but it can go up to around $90,000. It is based on the ad revenue a channel gets, which is the best way to ensure it is fair to the different players in the market here.

In other markets, they use share of audience for example but here, we have channels with high share and low ad revenue. It wouldn’t be fair for Asianet to pay the same as MBC for example.

If a channel is already part of the list, they only have to pay the annual subscription.

Obviously, the share holders have helped to fund the system and have paid a lot more to support the channels.

Are you happy with the list you have right now?

I am happy with the list as a trade off. It has the main commercial channels there, especially the MBC channels and a selection of Arabic channels, Hindi and Malayalam channels.

Unfortunately, with even this list, we only cover between 40-50% of the viewing but if you look at the other 350 channels that make 50% of the viewing, we are still talking about very small incremental gains with the addition of each channel. However, we are constantly looking at those that are coming under the radar. There are some Egyptian channels, for instance, that are not on our list and some Indian channels that are showing promise. We will monitor those. Our aim is to expand the number of channels rather than replace them.

Tell me a bit about the panel that has been chosen for your measurement?

850 households have been selected to be part of this. Everybody has an equal chance to be on it and it follows some criteria including nationality, location, socio-economic variables and so on. It is designed to reflect the TV viewing population of the UAE. All of the seven emirates have been included although we have more from Dubai and Abu Dhabi because there are more viewers here.

We have tried to construct a picture of the UAE population and then tried to fill the panel to reflect that.

What technology are you deploying at people’s homes?

It looks a bit like a set-top box. It is connected to the TV screen and takes samples from the audio feed, which is later matched to off-air audio. As soon as the TV is turned on, the box knows something is being watched.

Each household is provided with a remote and each person in that household is identified on the remote with a button. One spouse would be Button A, for instance, and the other would be Button B and the child Button C and so on.

When the person switches on the TV, they are supposed to press the relevant button and when they leave the room, they are supposed to depress the button again to indicate their exit.

That way, we not only know the programme was watched by the household but we know the individual profiles of the viewers. Of course, they are anonymous when it comes to reporting.

Who manages these households?

Kantar Media will manage the panel and train them. Panel management is a critical part of running a TAM system and there are established models. Sometimes, the panel receives a cash incentive. The incentive persuades them to come on to the panel but experience shows that it does not affect their behaviour when they are on the panel.

A whole psychology goes into managing that panel. If a household is not pressing its buttons, Kantar will impress upon them the importance of doing it and train them and if they still don’t do it, they will take them off the panel and replace them.

What kind of measurement data can you obtain from this?

We get individual demographic data on who watches what programme and at which times. That data is uploaded via a mobile SIM card that is in each box every night after 3 a.m. and the data is then processed. The audio signals from the household boxes are matched with the off-air audio signals, alongside the monitoring of programmes and spots, and that’s how we know what they are watching. Around lunch time, we release minute-by-minute data at an individual level. Every day, broadcasters and advertisers can see how their ads fared the previous night. If there was a long ad break in the middle of a popular programme and everyone left the room, the ad spot will have a lower rating than the programme and that changes the dynamic of how we measure the audience. You’re no longer guessing.

What, according to you, are some of the new audience measurement systems on the market?

Companies have been doing people meter TV measurement for at least ten years. The people meters themselves are reliable and accurate systems but there are new systems on the market like portable people meter systems. They look like a pager device but they allow you to measure out-of-home viewing as well.  This is where people are moving to because with this, you can also measure radio. Still others are looking at online video measurement.

We have a very complicated viewership model. Given what we know about this market, it would have been difficult to put in a more complex mode of measurement. I can’t imagine what it would be like to do portable people meters. But once companies begin to see the benefit of this system, we will be ready to move towards a more sophisticated system.

Who benefits the most?

The agencies and the advertisers will get more accurate and reliable measure to what they are buying. The broadcasters are involved in that kind of transaction as well.

There is also the programming aspect to it. From a broadcast point of view, you get to know what people are watching, which programmes are watched the most, when people stop watching and how to change your schedules to ensure people don’t flip channels. There is also the overarching aspect to it, which is having an internationally recognised way of accurate, open method of conducting audience measurement and what they like and don’t like.

That is important to a multi-national advertiser, who probably is accountable to someone in London and who wants to know how his advertising dollars are being spent.

Clearly, we hope to see an overall increase in the ad budget of the TV market.

There are reports about how this will help everyone on a Gulf-wide basis. It will bring more money into advertising and that will mean more budget will become available for programming and it makes advertising more creative and entertaining. At the end of the day, it is all about the viewers.