Saying it’s vitally important information for marketers to gauge total audience, Nielsen has announced the out-of-home (OOH) program types with the greatest pull. News and sports are strong for those watching TV at work, in a waiting room, at a friend’s home, and so on.
But an in-depth, year-to-date analysis of OOH TV viewing data from the Nielsen Total Audience framework highlights that many other genres benefit.
In the first six months of this year, across English-language broadcast networks that aired content from these genres, the average audience lift was 5%. From an audience perspective, that equates to nearly 300,000 more viewers ages 6 and older per telecast. When you drill down to examine the OOH impact among viewers 18-49 for these program genres, one finds that the additional average of nearly 115,000 viewers per telecast equates to an average lift of 8%. For Spanish-language networks, these types of shows deliver an average increase of 6% lift.
Individual programs are also enjoying healthy lift from OOH viewing. When Nielsen looked at how OOH affects the top 10 broadcast programs for persons 6 and older and persons 18-49, they found that there was up to a 20% percent audience lift in the first half of 2018. Across the top programs among the main English-language broadcast networks for persons 6 and older, OOH added more than 500,000 additional viewers to the top two telecasts.
For those same programs, OOH added at least 205,000 more viewers in the 18-49 demographic—that’s at least 40% of their total OOH audience. Compared with national viewing, OOH generated more than an 8% lift for the top program and a 5.3% lift for the second-ranked program.
Similar to English-language stations, OOH contestant competitions, game shows, comedy entertainment, and audience participation programming on Spanish-language broadcast networks delivered an impressive audience and percent lift during the first-half of 2018.
For specific Spanish-language content that aired during this period, OOH delivered double-digit percentage lifts for seven of the top 10 programs among viewers 6 and older. During the period, a quiz show was the No. 1 program from an OOH perspective, as just over 81,000 viewers watched it away from their homes, generating a 10% lift over the national viewing (in-home) among viewers 6 and older. And the core buying demo, persons 18-49, accounted for 55% of this program’s total OOH audience.
Among Spanish-language networks, OOH offers an unprecedented opportunity to reach younger viewers and those that matter most to advertisers. In the first six months of 2018, eight of the top 10 OOH programs delivered double-digit percentage lifts among viewers 18-49. For the top five programs, this demo represented between 49% and 55% of the total OOH audience.
Historically, cable news and sports programs have carried a large share of the OOH viewing minutes; however, consumers are watching other types of cable content outside of the home. The contribution of OOH viewing to cable programs isn’t just bringing in additional viewers; it’s bringing in viewers in the key buying demo (P18-49). Across audience participation, comedy entertainment, contestant competition and quiz show programs, OOH viewers aged 18-49 delivered over 4% lift in the first half of 2018. For individual programs across these same genres, the OOH lift for among people 6 and older and 18-49 extends up to nearly 22%.
During the first half of 2018, contestant competition programs are most popular on broadcast from an OOH perspective, and comedy entertainment programs were most popular on cable. Of the genres analyzed, comedy entertainment programs accounted for six of the top 10 programs among people 6 and older as well as people 18-49.
It’s also important to note that while OOH cable viewers prefer comedy entertainment, a contestant competition program was the No. 1 show. Through the OOH lens, a single cable contestant competition telecast added nearly 47,000 additional viewers, representing a 3.7% lift over national viewing. Nearly 30,000 of those viewers were 18-49, accounting for 62% of the total OOH audience. And while broadcast TV delivers more OOH viewers from the key 18-49 buying demo, cable attracts a larger share of this group for a program’s overall audience. For the top six audience participation, comedy entertainment, contestant competition and quiz show programs, this group accounts for 62%-90% of the telecast audiences.
