MCV GameTime: Industry TV advertising monitor (wk ending October 16th)

We look at recent TV advertising activity for games and the leading campaigns for the week ending October 16th year-on-year.

This is provided by specialist communication firmGeneration Mediawhich focuses on the entertainment and leisure industries.

Further week-on-week growth (62 per cent) saw games and consoles ads produce 732 individual TVRs. This made the week ending October 16th the sixth highest performing week for the market this year.

However, it is still some 18 per cent short of matching the best performing week of the year (week ending March 6th), when Nintendo’s campaigns for Pokmon Black and White (282 TVRs) was on air.

This week produced a four per cent year-on-year increase in individual TVRs. The year-to-date figure has been reduced to eight per cent due to the decline for w/e October 9th being revised down to 25 per cent.

Microsoft’s Kinect Sports: Season Two was the most heavily advertised game, with 106 individual TVRs, just ahead of Microsoft’s other big release Forza Motorsport 4 with 103 TVRs.

Targeting your audience

The chart (right) compares the Top Ten games and consoles campaigns from the last four recorded weeks (September 19th to October 16th).The size of the bubble indicates the size of the campaign in terms of number of individual TVRs. The further to the right the bubble sits determines how young the focus audience of the campaign was. The higher the bubble sits determines how male focused the campaign was.

Forza 4 was the most heavily advertised campaign during the period, and not surprisingly its focus was the slightly older male audience. F1 2011, sitting in the same genre as Forza is also found in the same portion of the chart.

Although Sesame Street has a pre-school theme, its campaign did not have the youngest focus. Its female skew indicates that this campaign actually targeted mums rather than children.

What’s a TVR?

The TVR (Television Rating) is the measure of popularity for a programme or ad by comparing its audience to the population as a whole. One TVR is equivalent to one per cent of a target audience. So if Coronation Street achieved a Housewives TVR of 20 in Yorkshire it means that, on average, 20 per cent of all Housewives in Yorkshire watched it.

A campaign can achieve over 100 TVRs, however. But this does not mean that it has been seen by 100 per cent of the population, as TVRs only refer to the percentage of the population reached at the time of airing. So airing an ad during Corrie six times gives you 120 TVRs, but you may only be reaching the same 20 per cent of people.

MCV GameTime is provided by Generation Media. 0207 255 4650 lwww.generationmedia.co.uk