An adverts job is to promote a product or service and increase sales.

This is incredibly important to all products even very well established brands like Coke
still need to advertise to keep up sales.
TV adverts are one of the most common forms of advertisements. They have the
capability to reach a large and specific group of people simultaneously. Research done
by 3
rd
parties and TV channels themselves provides information on what demographic
certain shows on certain days have watching. One such company is the non profit
organisation BARB which provides the official statistics for the UK. The Broadcasters
Audience Research Board (BARB) provides official viewing figures for UK
television audiences. It commissions specialist research companies Ipsos
MORI, Kantar Media and RSMB to collect data that represent the television
viewing behaviour of the UKs 26 million TV households.
This is done by collecting data on viewing habits from houses specially selected by
RSMB to be representative of all TV watching homes across the UK.
In each of the houses on the selected panel, all television viewing is monitored
automatically by equipment installed by Kantar Media. Included in this process is
viewing of recorded programmes that are watched within seven days of the original
broadcast; this is referred to as timeshift viewing. More than 30,000 viewing devices are
monitored across the panel of over 5,100 homes, including PVRs, DVDRs and VCRs, as
well as standard set-top boxes.
Residents and guests in a panel home register their presence in a room containing a
television set that is switched on, which is the BARB definition of television viewing.
They then deregister when leaving the room. In this way, the meter records all viewing
by every person in the household aged 4+, adding individual demographic information
to the overall viewing data. This information is uploaded automatically to BARB where it
can contribute to audience statistics.
These statistics can then be published and made available for broadcasters to know the
demographics and numbers of their audiences.
This is a form of quantitative research is used to collect general information on sheer
numbers. Alternatively qualitative research can be used to collect much more specific
data. This can be done through questionnaires, interviews as well as focus groups and is
usually used by the channels who for their own self improvement. Through these the
networks can ask very specific questions and get detailed feedback about their opinions
on the scheduling, the programmes, the quality and originality and anything they want
to say. While much more detailed this information can only be collected in
comparatively very small numbers and therefore the people who take part have to be
very carefully selected to ensure they represent the opinions of many other groups as
well.
Viewership statistics are most valuable to a channel for attracting other companies to
buy TV spots on certain shows not just because they have large audiences but also
specific ones.
The demographic watch a programme can be matched with a products target audience
and TV spots can be bought accordingly. For example the programming on E4 is mostly
targeted at you people and as such has a very high percentage of you viewers aged
between 16-34. E4 is watched by 59% of young people every month which makes a
great choice for advertising a product aimed young people.

As well at a large young audience there are other factors that E4 viewers share in
common. According to this information from BARB/Advantedge their audience is quite
upmarket and just generally on the higher end of the class system ranging from C1 up
to A.


The type of advertising shown E4 does reflect on this data. I logged onto E4 and clicked
on one of its most popular shows, My Mad Fat Diary. 16-34 year olds make up 66% of
this shows viewership and the Ad that played before it was the trailer for the Fault in
Our Stars. The Fault in Our Stars is based on a childrens book about a teenagers love
story and battle with cancer.
The film is in general intended for a teenage audience but more specifically teenagers
who can handle some deeper thinking and a rom com with some more serious themes
such as cancer and death. A similar audience to My Mad Fat Diary which covers issues
such as mental health as well as teen drama.
The ideal audience however wont necessarily be within the price range of you product.
The pricing of a TV spot can depend on the region, the length of the commercial, time of
day, the programming environment, the time of year, the target audience and volume of
viewers. Channels usually have a section of their website or a whole other site entirely
dedicated to information for potential clients looking to advertise with them including
tools like rate cards which inform you how much different spots cost to help companies
decide. Like this one from ITV shown below