How Are TV Ratings Gathered? Understanding Big Data as a Solution for Accurate Viewership Figures
TV ratings are the gold standard for measuring viewership. But, as audiences expand viewing habits across linear TV, connected TV (CTV) and digital platforms, traditional methods—like household panels and set-top box data—struggle to keep up. This happens because traditional methods only capture a fraction of true cross-platform behaviors, and the modern viewer is no longer engaging with media on a single screen. To offer truly personalized ads that help drive revenue, brands need to think outside the set-top box.
Source: Deloitte, Personalizing growth: It’s a value exchange between brands and customers, June 2024
That’s why understanding big data can help. By harnessing large-scale, privacy-forward data sets, we at VideoAmp can offer a more precise way to understand what audiences are watching and when.
In this article, we’ll cover:
- Traditional TV ratings collection methods
- How brands use big data to gather ratings the smart way
- Why big data matters to brands and advertisers
- Big data solutions for gathering cross-platform ratings
The Old-School Way: Traditional TV Ratings Collection
So, how are TV ratings calculated in the first place? Historically, the TV ratings scene was dominated by a single entity collecting aggregated viewership data from an opt-in audience. That audience, as you can imagine, was limited—and not fully representative of every person watching linear TV. Of course, intelligent collection methods helped form the data into something useful, but small sample sizes and self-reported metrics will always be subject to error.
Think of it this way: Imagine you’re trying to determine what an entire city watched on Sunday night by surveying just 200 households. Of those households, only 50 were enthusiastic about your survey, and the rest were eager to get off the phone as fast as possible. If there was a large-scale event that night, like an awards show or the Super Bowl, you may come away from your survey with a generally accurate data set.
But, most likely, your data set is subject to gaps and bias, rendering it incomplete and fractional at best. With even larger factors at play in TV ratings collection, including regional preferences and changing trends, you can likely see why old-school ratings collection isn’t always accurate.
That’s why it’s crucial to answer the question, “How are TV ratings gathered?”—because it’s changing every day.
Set-top box data improved accuracy by pulling direct viewership statistics from cable and satellite providers. Still, it only captured a fraction of the target audiences and struggled to measure other viewership channels, including:
- CTV
- Over-the-top (OTT)
- Over-the-air broadcasts
- Device-based viewing
As a result, advertisers were making big-budget decisions on incomplete information, leading to wasted ad spend and missed opportunities.s.
Our take? TV ratings collection shouldn’t feel like a shot in the dark.
Understanding Big Data: The Smarter Way to Measure TV Ratings
If traditional ratings were a magnifying glass, big data is a high-powered telescope. Gone are the days of small samples and self-biased metrics. With big data solutions, brands can analyze massive real-world data sets from a variety of sources at once. It’s easy to see why advertisers everywhere are prioritizing big data strategies such as data clean rooms (DCRs) that encompass privacy-first practices to drive results.
Source: IAB, State of Data 2023, January 2023
So, how are TV ratings gathered today? Thanks to big data, cross-platform ratings are possible to capture across:
- OTT and CTV
- Set-top box data
- Smart TV Automatic content recognition (ACR)
- First-party publisher data
OTT and CTV
Millions of TVs and streaming devices passively collect viewership information, offering a much broader glimpse into audience behavior.
Set-top box
It’s a classic for a reason. Combined with other strategies, this linear TV collection method helps build a holistic profile of target audiences everywhere.
Smart TV ACR
ACR technology identifies what’s playing on a screen and whether it’s a live program, streaming media or an advertisement.
First-party publisher data
Networks and streaming platforms may provide their data to help brands enhance ad measurement accuracy. Keep in mind, though: Privacy regulations can make organizations hesitate to share protected information.
Big data solutions pull insights from real-world audiences rather than extrapolating from a limited group of viewers. This provides more precision, more granularity and more confidence when making your ad spend decisions.
Why big data matters to brands and advertisers
Whether you’re creating ads for linear TV, CTV, digital or a combination of platforms, you need assurance that your ad budget isn’t being wasted on unoptimized strategies that fail to reach the right audiences. Unfortunately, traditional ratings systems often leave advertisers guessing about their true reach, frequency and impact—leading to inefficiencies and lost opportunities.
Understanding big data, on the other hand, helps you blow these limitations out of the water. A big data approach empowers brands with:
- Better audience segmentation. Targeting niche audiences based on personal behaviors and psychographics helps drive conversions.
- Cross-platform measurement. Getting a fuller picture of ad engagement across linear TV, CTV and digital helps avoid wasted ad spend while driving results all at once.
- Ad attribution accuracy. Connecting privacy-compliant viewership data with business outcomes is no longer a long shot. With big data, it’s possible to drive smarter ad investments—and increase ROI—in a way brands never could before.
Source: IAB, State of Data 2024, March 2024
Wondering what this looks like in action? Take the 97th Academy Awards. Disney decided to stream the Oscars to Hulu subscribers, adding more than one million viewers to the broadcast. The resulting viewership made it the most-watched broadcast in five years. Capturing those additional viewers meant deploying big data tactics that comprised a cross-platform approach—and the results were impossible to deny.
Big data solutions for gathering TV ratings
It’s time to let outdated sampling methods lie. At VideoAmp, we reimagine TV measurement by leveraging privacy-first big data solutions that empower brands like you to waste less and accomplish more. Our solutions like VALID™ bring together first and third-party data sources in our proprietary clean room technology to deliver a comprehensive data set—and help you achieve ROI faster. Major media players like Paramount trust our measurement solutions for a reason: We help them make data-driven decisions that actually move the needle.
So, how are TV ratings gathered today? And how can you step into the future of ratings collection? Audiences engage in more cross-platform behaviors than ever, but that doesn’t mean they’re harder to visualize. With big data, you can finally access the tools to precisely measure and optimize campaigns across every screen—and put your ad spend to work.
Want to see how big data can transform your ad strategy?
