BRC August 2023 industry update

Television Universe Update

In order to provide a much-needed 2023 television universe update, the Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (BRC) commissioned a new Television Establishment Survey (ES).

The Television universe was updated in October 2020; however, much has happened over the past three years. It remains critical that all changes in South African viewership be reflected in the universe.

With a sample of 8 000, comprising of 5 000 face-to-face and 3 000 online interviews, the results of the new Television ES have already been validated and have passed scrutiny. The dataset will be made available to the industry on the 11^th of September. The BRC is aiming to engage with the industry at the end of September 2023 regarding the TAMS universe update. All media agencies will be granted six weeks for scrutiny and planning prior to the universe update taking effect.

Future Proofing Video Measurement

The new ES data results indicate that there is definite movement within the realm of video viewing. Because of this, new entrants into the marketplace and loadshedding, the BRC are currently reviewing an SDK (Software Development Kit) implementation, which will allow for measurement of streaming, OTT, alternative devices and out of home viewing.

The SDK will be incorporated at a publisher level, resulting in a census output – all traffic across all opted-in publishers. A panel in excess 10 000 respondents will serve as the source of demographic profiling for the census data, a cookie match approach, with the weighting based on the BRC’s latest Television ES. Setup will commence in Q4 2023.

RAMS Amplify™

Regarding RAMS Amplify™ Reach and Frequency, the BRC’s CEO, Gary Whitaker says that the final validations are being carried out by external auditors. The Radio Research Technical Committee will get a first look at the data before it is released to the industry. The BRC confirms that it will happen before the end of August.

Fusion

Additionally, the BRC has confirmed that they will be using the new TV ES as the base survey for the next data Fusion project. Fusion matches respondents from different surveys and combines them into a single dataset. The intention, in the future, is to make use of the Marketing Research Foundation’s (MRF), MAPS (Marketing All Product Survey) data as the base survey. The next iteration of Fusion is expected to be available at the end of January 2024.

“It makes sense to use MAPS as the base survey in any fused data project as the survey’s underlying processes, procedures, and protocols have recently been audited and the data it provides is stable and accurate,” says Whitaker. “There is a lot happening in the background at the BRC and in partnership with various stakeholders we’re happy to be delivering South African broadcasting’s single source of truth when it comes to television and radio media currencies – crucial for media audience research.”

For more information on the BRC visit https://brcsa.org.za/

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