‘Expedition Unknown tops cable programs, TVision says

The CW’s Roswell, New Mexico, is the TV show with the most viewable ads during April, according to TVision.

TV Viewability is defined as the percentage of ad impressions during which a viewer was in the room for two or more seconds.

The metric is important because advertisers want viewers to be able to see the commercials they pay for. Also TV viewability is high and advertisers have been complaining about the viewability of digital ads, which sometimes play in only a small part of the screen. One media agency did a study and found that 29% of all TV advertising was not viewable.

Roswell had 93.6% ad viewability, according to TVision. Other top shows on broadcast TV were The Resident on Fox at 89.2%, CBS’s God Friended Me at 88.2%, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy at 88.1% and For the People on ABC at 87.4%.

Among cable shows, Discovery Channel’s Expedition Unknown drew the highest viewability score at 92.1%. It was followed by Food Network’s Restaurant Impossible at 90.2%, Knightfall on History at 86.5%, Naked and Afraid Pop-Up Edition on Discovery at 86.4% and 90 Day Fiance: Happily Ever After? on TLC at 85%.

Four of those five shows are on networks owned by Discovery.

“A number of factors contribute to ad viewability, including pod position, program genre, daypart, audience demographic, ad creative length, and more,” said Raman Sehgal, VP of marketing at TVision.

“So these top programs are doing a great job of keeping viewers in the room between commercial breaks, providing advertisers with many opportunities for their creative to resonate with viewers,” Sehgal said. “If viewers are not in the room when the ad runs, the message cannot influence behavior.”

Previously, TVision reported on how much attention viewers paid to the shows and commercials they see on television--another measure advertisers are paying attention to.

“Once the opportunity to see an ad has been established, we can then measure if the viewer engaged with that ad (Attention),” he said. “Our person-by-person, second-by-second data enables us to measure both TV Viewability and Attention. The combined application of these two TV Performance Metrics is best to inform TV planning, buying, and measurement.”

TV Vision uses eye tracking and other techniques in its labs to measure how people actually watch TV. TVision measures P2+, live plus same day for original primetime shows.