Oztam has incorrectly recorded TV rating numbers wrong for three months this year, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
The agency – owned by Nine, Seven and 10 – measures how many people watch free-to-air TV in Australia. But the publication revealed that this week OzTam contacted the commercial networks to admit that it underestimated the viewing numbers in the Sydney market from June.
The numbers could be inaccurate by as many as 20,000 viewers; a source told the SMH, which is enough to impact program rankings on the evenings significantly.
A spokesperson for OzTam said in a statement to the publication: “Nielsen is investigating an anomaly in overlap areas between metro and regional markets, in which a small amount of viewing to the metro broadcaster services looks to have been attributed to regional ‘spill’ viewing, rather than credited to the metro broadcasters.”
“The investigation continues, and once that is complete, Nielsen will reprocess and republish ratings data from early June, when the anomaly began.”
The term ‘spill’ refers to viewers in Sydney’s outer south that reach both metropolitan and regional broadcast signals but are recorded as part of the metropolitan results. In this instance, the spill was instead attributed to Wollongong.
OzTam ratings are an important tool used by commercial networks to set prices on ads based on different times and markets. If a time slot fails to reach the promised market, the network compensates by running that ad again in a less watched time slot, such as the middle of the day or late at night, according to the publication
If the numbers are not rectified, the impact could arise in end-of-year standings, bragging rights and how much advertisers will be charged in future, which is important, particularly as the networks’ upfront season begins this month.
James Warburton
In June, Seven West Media managing director and chief executive officer, James Warburton, spoke to a room of journalists for a media briefing and touched on several topics, including a pause on overnight ratings.
See also: James Warburton on why Seven has suggested pausing overnight ratings
At the briefing, Warburton said: “I’m not talking about taking away overnights, I’m talking about removing them to move everyone to the new currency and then having them come back in so you get it all.
“VOZ will be fundamentally different. VOZ will be as big a change as when we went from diaries to people meters. That’s why we’ll work with Media Federation and the AANA – they will start getting data this year, and they’ll have to be plugging it all in and looking at the changes between the two systems. It will be fundamentally different to what we’ve had before, so I think it’ll be an interesting time.”
When asked if the move was driven by clients or by Seven, the CEO said: “It’s a combination of both, I don’t think there’s any argument from anyone in the industry that viewing has changed – all we’ve done is really shine a light on the fact that we’ve been reporting the same way for 22 years.
“We’ve all built good BVOD businesses very quickly, so clients are using them because they’re very effective in terms of the combination with free-to-air.
“The tipping point is when it gets into the reach and frequency systems and they can actually analyse it. That’s the game changer,” Warburton added.