Predictive analytics can help marketers in several ways:  It can provide a deeper understanding of customers to guide the marketing spend; it offers guidance on selecting messages and vehicles for communicating with them, and; it provides key metrics for measuring campaign impact.

Nielsen teamed up with Experian, the credit reporting agency, and dLife, the leading online resource for diabetics, to develop a program targeting the diabetes community.  Diabetes accounts for 31 percent of health care costs in the U.S. and approximately $175 billion in spending.  Using diabetics’ common interest – in this case – how their disease shapes their lives and influences their food purchasing patterns – the team was able to pinpoint high-value consumer targets, determine the best retail channels to reach them and deliver marketing materials that were specific to their needs.

Read the full case study on how predictive analytics shaped this campaign and can uncover the hidden treasure of consumer value in the current edition of Consumer Insight.

Other findings include:

• Despite 3 in 10 households owning a DVR, live TV continues to be the favorite way to watch TV.
• 54 percent of U.S. households have one or two TVs.
• Hispanic households are more than twice as likely as other groups to download movies.
• Fully 91 percent of households have Internet access, with 57 percent having high-speed connections.
• Viewers can be clustered into eight discrete segments based on gender, age, media consumption levels, ethnicity and social outlook.

“Media has become a digital funhouse: phones deliver TV programming. Computers enable phone calls. Televisions serve as gaming arcades. Consumers access video wherever and whenever they can.  But the fact remains that TV still dominates,” said Dave Thomas, President, Global Media Client Services at Nielsen.

Read a complete review of the state of the media in the current edition of Nielsen’s Consumer Insight.

Susan D. Whiting

Of the myriad challenges confronting the television industry, the much-discussed defection by viewers to online and mobile platforms may be the most comforting; simply because it hasn’t happened. Despite the profusion of multimedia computers, broadband Internet connections and portable video devices, the overwhelming majority of Americans are staying right where they are – in front of their TV sets inside their homes.

That is just one finding from a new, year-long Video Consumer Mapping study, which calls into question several current presumptions about media consumption. Conducted by Ball State University’s Center for Media Design and Sequent Partners, and funded by The Nielsen Company, the $3.5 million research project was produced on behalf of the Council for Research Excellence, an independent body of broadcast, cable and advertising professionals and associations.

Though primarily focused on television and video, the study quite literally examined how consumers incorporate all forms of media into their daily lives. To that end, researchers observed, first-hand, 376 individuals in five major markets (Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta and Seattle) throughout an entire day as they were exposed to visual content across a full spectrum of platforms. Observers also tracked a special Accelerated Panel in the Indianapolis market, whose 100 members specifically engaged with selected new media devices. In all, the more than 950 observed days generated an abundance of comprehensive data related to screens on televisions, computers, cell phones and even GPS navigation systems.

Yet this ability to directly monitor and record individuals’ activities all through their waking hours – in increments as concise as every 10 seconds – also provides unique insights that sometimes starkly contrast with participants’ own recall. In questionnaires completed by panel members a day after being observed, TV use was substantially underreported, although the observation data confirmed earlier Nielsen research that more than 99 percent of all consumer screen time is still spent with television.

On the other hand, respondents significantly over-reported both online video and mobile video use. Though computing has replaced radio as the number two media activity, video on PCs actually averaged just two minutes (slightly more than 0.5 percent) a day; whereas exposure to video on mobile phones was too small to measure without a much larger sample. Indeed, by any measure TV in the home still dominates viewing behavior – whether in terms of daily reach (94 percent) or average daily duration (5.5 hours) – among all adults.

Market researchers know full well to exercise caution when interpreting self-reported information by consumers about their exposure to multiple media, because most people find it hard to accurately gauge the time they spend. One reason may be that TV viewing is such a familiar activity it is easily taken for granted; while watching video on newer technologies is still unique enough to engender disproportionate attention, and possibly skew outcomes.

Thus, it should not be a complete surprise that media multitasking, a skill set regularly associated with 18 to 24-year old “digital natives,” is, in truth, practiced among all age groups 55 and under. Nor, for that matter, is the fact that TV viewers are exposed, on average, to 72 minutes per day of commercials and promos, dispelling the commonly-held notion that audiences avidly avoid most ads in television programs.

Conventional wisdom is frequently based on old assumptions that ignore or dismiss the emergence of new ideas. In this instance, however, some of the new ideas may essentially represent a collective rush to judgment.

For one thing, enduring changes in consumer behavior rarely happen overnight. They tend to be a lot more subversive than revolutionary, becoming apparent only after years of continuous adaptation. For another, predictions about new technologies sometimes underestimate the staying power of the products and systems they seek to replace. Even among digital natives, who are exposed to twice as many different screens as those 65 and older (10 versus 5), live TV occupies the largest share of media time.

Nonetheless, many pundits limit their perspectives to only a handful of big, popular concepts when drawing conclusions, either failing or choosing to overlook a wider choice of possibilities. But in an expanding and simultaneously fragmenting media universe, the capacity to leverage a multitude of resources and opinions is crucial.

This is why the Video Consumer Mapping study substantially enhances the body of knowledge about how people use media. Not only does it capture critical data through extensive direct observation rather than merely count on less reliable responses via diaries or telephone interviews, but it also reflects the diversity of interests and objectives across the Council for Research Excellence. By bringing together what are often competing points of view and applying them to a truly rich array of facts, it exceeds conventional wisdom. The result is both a broader and deeper understanding of just how much the market is changing; and forcefully consumers are driving that change; and how profoundly it affects all parties.

Conducted on behalf of the Nielsen-funded Council for Research Excellence, the study ran over the course of a year and used a custom media collector program developed by Ball State.  Researchers gathered a wide range of data usage of any of the four categories of screens: traditional TVs (including DVD/VCR and DVR viewing), computers, mobile devices and “all other screens,” including in-cinema movies, GPS and display screens outside of the home.

Key findings of the study include:

• Consumers aged 45-54 racked up an average of more than 9 1/2 hours of screen time a day.

• The average for all other age groups was similar at roughly 8 1/2 hours.

• Computer video watching took on average just two minutes a day.

• TV still dominates, even among those aged 18-24.

• Radio usage has dropped to third, behind TV and computer usage, but ahead of print media.

• TV viewers were exposed to an average of 72 minutes of TV ads and promos every day, dispelling the conventional wisdom that people are channel-hopping or otherwise avoiding ads.

Read the full press release.

Writing in the January issue of Nielsen’s “Consumer Insight” online newsletter, Palak Patel of NeuroFocus Inc., explains that the real truth lies beyond the reach of typical consumer research methods, like surveys and focus groups — in the subconscious mind.

According to Patel, answers are essentially corrupted information — biased by the conscious mind, which is influenced by everything from what language you speak to what your grandmother told you as a child.  Only by monitoring actual brainwaves, can marketers gain access to the deep subconscious mind, where brand identity and purchase decisions are formed.

“When you are asked a question about how you think about something, or what you feel, or what you remember, in the course of formulating your answer your brain actually changes the original data it received,” Patel writes.  “Since information gathered with other conventional forms of market research… is collected at this stage, the answers are filtered through too many mental mechanisms to produce the level of pure, precise information that neurological testing does.”

Read the full article.

View the latest issue of “Consumer Insight.”