Abstract

Program audience ratings are typically used as a reference in placing and pricing television advertisements. However, the discrepancy in audience size between a program and its commercials impairs the reliability of the program ratings. This study proposes a new metric, commercial audience retention (CAR), to measure a program’s capability of retaining its audience when a commercial break occurs and develops a model to predict a program’s CAR. The CAR metric and prediction model are tested and validated using a sufficient dataset with consumer TV viewing and program broadcast records for 1 year. We find that some factors that influence program ratings or commercial avoidance have no significant effect or have different effects on CAR. Our empirical results may be of value for advertisers and TV stations in purchasing and pricing of commercial airtime. A real-world application of the CAR metric for an advertising company is offered as an illustration.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2021.1906541 .

摘要

节目收视率通常用作放置和定价电视广告的参考。然而，节目与其广告之间的观众规模差异会损害节目收视率的可靠性。本研究提出了一个新的指标，即商业观众保留 (CAR)，以衡量一个节目在发生广告中断时保留其观众的能力，并开发一个模型来预测节目的​​ CAR。CAR 指标和预测模型使用足够的数据集进行测试和验证，该数据集包含 1 年的消费者电视观看和节目广播记录。我们发现一些影响节目收视率或商业回避的因素对 CAR 没有显着影响或有不同的影响。我们的实证结果可能对广告商和电视台在商业广播时间的购买和定价方面具有价值。提供了一个广告公司的 CAR 指标在现实世界中的应用作为说明。

本文的补充数据可在 https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2021.1906541 在线获取。