Google is offering a look into its process for measuring and analyzing data from television ads. It’s interesting to see the metrics they use and how they are trying to make television ads more relevant to viewers.
“Television is becoming more like the web. Just as users click with their mouse to choose what’s most relevant to them on the web, viewers send signals about what they want to see on television with clicks of the remote control,” says Dan Zigmond, Technical Lead for Google TV Ads.
Google analyzes data from set-top boxes, and looks at what channels they are tuned to on a second-by-second basis. Google uses tuning metrics like % Initial Audience Retained (%IAR) to see what percentage of the audience stays tuned through an entire ad.
“Many factors affect audience behavior, including the nature of the programming, the time of day, the day of week, and, of course, the personality of each viewer. But ads themselves also have an impact,” says Zigmond. “By identifying which factors affect tune-away, we can focus in on how the audience reacted to the ad itself.” It’s kind of like bounce rate for a web site.
Zigmond says Google is getting closer to matching the right ads to the right TV audience, and that they are able to offer advertisers better measurement and more accountability for their TV campaigns.
On another Google TV-related note, they are now providing a feature that makes it easier to produce your own ads through Adobe Premiere or Apple Final Cut Pro.
“For each of these software packages, we’ve prepared a settings preset file which, once imported, makes exporting a video in the correct format a snap,” explains
Marek Jeziorek, Video Operations Manager for Google TV Ads. “These files are pre-programmed with the right settings to generate a video that complies with the Google TV Ads technical requirements.”
Settings and preset files can be downloaded at this help center. There is of course more information on how to use them as well.
