NBC Claims Audience Measurement Gold With TAMi; Online Uniques Go From 4.2 Million To 7.8 Million
This story was written by David Kaplan.
Five days into the Olympic Games, NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) execs hailed the audience ratings results as "phenomenal" now that the first results from its "total audience measurement index," or TAMi, is in. The system measures cross-platform viewing and combines data from Nielsen Media Research and other audience trackers Omniture and Rentrak. Speaking on a conference call from Beijing, Alan Wurtzel, president of Research, NBCU, offered a raft of data, saying that this summer Olympics is projected to be the most viewed ever, 114 million topping the Atlanta games' 110 million. Some of the data from the TAMi release (PDF):
-- Online and the meaning of TAMi: Starting off with 4.2 million uniques on Friday, it grew to 4.8 million (Saturday) 5.1 million (Sunday) and 7.8 million (Monday). During the call, Wurtzel offered a definition of TAMi by emphasizing what it is not: "TAMi was created not just for the Olympics, but it will be used for all our cross-platform programming. We're starting out with the Olympics because it's such a huge event, it provides a good jumping off point. It measures exposure. it is not a currency, and we're not selling off it. It's not an unduplicated reach numberthere's no way to do that. Besides, we want to measure duplication. In fact, the more duplication across platforms the better I'll be happy when we can retire TAMI. But until the industry adopts single-source data. But we couldn't wait for that."
-- TAMi and ROI: TAMi also allows NBCU to examine how engaged consumers were with the ads across TV, online and mobile. Looking at effectiveness, for instance, viewers on NBCOlympics.com showed brand recall 85 percent higher than conventional prime.
-- No cannibalization: At least not so far, Wurtzel claimed. "More Data will be released later, but so far half say they wanted to see what they missed 40 percent wanted to see events again. By putting so much available online, it allows us to catch to the way users watchon demand. We feared in 2004, having seven networks, it would be too much and dilute the main coverage on broadcast. Multiplatform has helped boost TV."
-- Stunned by mobile: Wurtelz said he was "stunned" by the adoption of mobile usage over the last few days. "These Olympics are influencing how people are using new technology. Half of the people viewing on mobile are using it for the first time. After the Olympics, it will be intersting if these habits become part of their behavior." At the opening of the games, the network's mobile olympics WAP site attracted 210,000 uniques, rising steadily to 476,000 by Monday."
By David Kaplan