The Importance of TV Ratings 2

What if the TV rating measured by the AGB NIELSEN is not accurate and does not reflect the actual number of people that watch TV shows?  Normally, the advertising firms will place TV commercials on the TV shows which have high ratings measured by AGB Nielsen. If the  rating is not accurate that would mean that the millions of pesos spent by the companies to ensure that their products are being seen by a large number of consumers/viewers will go to waste and become useless.

For a small company like the company that produce the product ENDURANZ that I appeared in its TV commercial, it has to carefully select the TV shows that it will be spending their money on. They must have seen it wise to place their ENDURANZ TV AD in the SALAMAT DOK TV show which is being shown not during prime time, but on  early weekend mornings ( 6:00 am till 7:00 a.m. on Saturdays, , and 7:00 a.m. till 8:00 a.m. on Sundays ABS-CBN, Channel 2),  sometimes some of my friends have seen the ENDURANZ TV AD being aired in ABS-CBN’s XXX TV show. Clearly, the company wants to spend their limited budget for advertisement in non-prime TV shows which may command a lower advertisement cost but still have a decent rating.

But, how can the companies, their advertising agencies, and the TV networks be sure that the AGB Nielsen TV rating is accurate?

During a coffee break talk among our office mates, an office mate remarked that the TV rating of AGB Nielsen is accurate because according to her, many SSS personnel ( I worked with Social Security System) had told them that they had seen my appearance in MARIMAR which was at that time had a TV rating of 47%. On the contrary, nobody mentioned to her that they saw me in Margarita which had a rating of 11% at the time it was aired!

My wife was surprised when a sales clerk commented that  she saw me in MARIMAR playing the father of Rodolfo (Marvin Agustin). However, my sister living  in Zamboanga City claims that most of her friends are diehard Kapamilyas (meaning they  are watching only the shows of ABS-CBN). Still, a classmate during my MBA course in Ateneo Graduate School of Business told me that his family will only be able to watch me when I appear in the tv shows of GMA 7!

The measurement of the viewership of the TV done by AGB Nielsen on the TV shows uses the ramdom sampling method – an statistical tool where census or head count of those who are actually watching the TV show is not done but rather samples are randomly selected to represent a larger population. While many would continue to question its accuracy, it is not whether it is accurate or not that is important at the moment, it is the fact that it is the only tool that is being used by the advertisers to determine which TV shows will they place their TV commercials on. And since the TV networks want the revenues from the TV Commercials, the TV rating is very important to them.