Sensitive About My Areas: Media Measurement Company TRA Matches Shopper Data to TV Set-Top Boxes

It was only after five or 10 minutes of pondering the significance of new data from media measurement company, TRA, linking toilet paper purchasers to TV programming that it dawned on me: wait... how did they get that information? The answer, according to the story in Ad Age, is that TRA combined shopper card information with TV set-top box information and, voilà, showed that not only the internet can harvest valuable (in this case, personal) audience data for the benefit of ad targeting.

There was nary a mention of privacy in the story. Nor did it cross my mind until, as I say, I gave up trying to glean the opportunity in knowing that Two and a Half Men beat out America's Got Talent and Big Brother for "the distinguished title of the show most likely to get people to buy toilet paper."

Actually, I think the sentence as it appeared in the Ad Age story probably misrepresents the research. I'm not sure it can be said that Two and a Half Men is "the show most likely to get people to buy toilet paper." I believe the research says, instead, that the show reaches more toilet paper purchasers. There's a difference.

I am a Two and a Half Men viewer (sigh), which is in syndication on local TV during the make-dinner hour in our house. The show is one long sexist bathroom joke. If it is getting people to buy more toilet paper, well... gosh... then, the results are hardly counterintuitive, as Ad Age suggests. Indeed, the results strike an enormous blow for advertising intuition and should motivate toilet paper marketers everywhere to pursue similar, below-the-waist programming.

In which case, we could avoid all the exertions and privacy entanglements that may be associated with matching offline shopper card data to in-home TV set-top box data.

Which entanglements, if we were writing about internet media, would certainly be the story here, wouldn't it?

Unless it's just me being too sensitive about my areas.

 

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Comments

[Terese Herbig]

04:32 PM on 11/18/2010

With TRA’s Media TRAnalytics® advertisers can understand not only the Category purchasers but also their Brand purchasers. Interestingly, there are less than 100% of households who buy toilet paper in any given period (you can ask the syndicated market tracking providers to show that). While this analysis was completed for hhs that buy a lot of toilet paper, each brand has a unique set of buyers and their advertising may be messaged for loyals, switchers, or heavy buyers of the category as examples. So they will want to customize their advertising buy to allocate it to the programs that are highly concentrated in their intended audience. So yes, even with tp, it is important to find The Right Audience™ - that is our point!

[frank day]

09:17 AM on 11/08/2010

"Everyone" buys toilet paper.

Is there a target audience that does not?

[R.W. Sanders]

06:25 PM on 11/05/2010

Just like the earth has been broadcasting our presence into space with our tv sets ( radio waves are estimated to have traveled 50 light years since their origin), individuals have been broadcasting our private information since we allowed a company to put a wire into our houses.
A reporter, whose name escapes me, said she gave her name and email address to an investigative company she hired. Within thirty minutes they had her social security number, her spending habits, dating habits, preferences for all products and her geographical location at any time her cell is turned on or she uses a credit or debit card. By the way, they knew her friends just as well simply through association. BIG BROTHER IS HERE

[cnobody]

07:42 AM on 11/05/2010

the future of the M.T. Anderson YA book "Feed" will be here before we know it: commercial marketing in the guise of entertainment, being fed directly to our brains.