After first announcing VOZ and a roadmap to measure total TV viewing on TVs and connected devices back in 2018, OzTAM this year delivered on the promise with the market release of daily data.
The start of daily VOZ data flow to media agencies – presenting ratings that cover overnight, Consolidated 7 and BVOD viewing – marked the start of an agency consultation period.
OzTAM chief executive Doug Peiffer told Mediaweek: “From July this year we have been working with the agencies and the Media Federation to give them a period to onboard software, to analyse the data, work the VOZ Total TV numbers and integrate VOZ into their workflows.
“To support that, OzTAM decided to pay for the analysis software of choice for agencies during the onboarding process,” Peiffer said, adding agencies are at different stages of implementation, with some getting access to VOZ ahead of others. Clients have a choice of analysis software needed to process OzTAM data, in keeping with OzTAM’s practice of fostering an open software market.
“OzTAM has been working closely with third-party software providers towards VOZ accreditation for more than a year. They have the programs that read the data and they’re developing new modules to bring VOZ to life,” he said.
VOZ is an enormous and complex database, and one of the challenges during Covid has been to introduce people to new software while they are working from home. “People are having good success with it, but it’s not the same as face-to-face instruction.
“So far we have onboarded most of the major agency groups and some of the independents too. They have access to our VOZ dashboard and get the ranking reports and run them how they like by demos, regions etc.
“The dashboard is getting used more and more as people become familiar with the insights it offers. We also have a reach and frequency portal where advertisers can get their spots from TV and their impressions from BVOD. The broadcasters are making good use of that, proving the value of sponsorships for campaigns. Certain programs are getting double-digit increases in reach when you add linear catch-up (time shift) and BVOD.
“That of course is the whole point of VOZ. This is how people are consuming TV and the ad dollars will follow.
“The broadcasters are also really working hard and promoting the new data and getting good feedback which is very encouraging after the long road we’ve all been on. It’s been a long time coming, but we are happy it is out as we get feedback from clients and we continually improve the output.”
Further enhancements to the VOZ database will be a full range of demographics as comprehensive as is available from the existing TV ratings.
Peiffer: “We are working on continual improvement and onboarding as many agencies as we can. We are working on automating the capture of BVOD impressions. People will then be able to do a complete campaign analysis across linear and BVOD.
“Currently the way TV and BVOD is bought is mainly separate. Right now VOZ is mostly being used as a planning database to understand how people are consuming content across devices and by time of day.”
VOZ as currency
There is one thing many have asked the OzTAM CEO: “A question I get asked a lot of the time is, ‘will VOZ become currency that agencies will trade on?’ The question around currency is whether the buyer and the seller agree to trade on it. If they strike a deal that a certain percentage of dollars are going to TV and another percentage to BVOD, or if the broadcasters guarantee TARPs across broadcast and BVOD, then it will be used as currency.
“Deals will eventually start to be done across the two and the tracking, monitoring and planning will then follow.
“One of the concerns about currency the agencies have is if we are taking away any of the current data the ecosystem runs on. We are not. On Mediaocean, the largest trading platform for television, will still provide TV files to run on the system.
“Until VOZ becomes a full-blown currency we will continue to support legacy systems.”
Tracking changing patterns of viewing
Peiffer: “Although it’s early days for people who have been hands-on, they have been getting good insights into which programs do well on BVOD on-demand compared to live linear viewing. That might change again too. During lockdown people at home tend to use different devices. As we get out of lockdown and people start heading to the office we will see different patterns. We will see the time of day by device patterns change and we will see the use of video change as people return to commuting.
“During lockdowns, there was a spike in SVOD usage with an increase in multiple services being used by people at home. Around 30-40% of the population now have multiple SVOD services at home. That has an impact on viewing and it has an impact on how people time shift and organise their viewing hours each day.”