NLogic, the analytics arm of Numeris (formerly BBM Canada), has launched a cloud-based TV audience analysis tool, the first of what it says will be a suite of dashboard products for analyzing TV and digital audiences in Canada.
While BBM, Canada’s primary TV ratings provider, was working on its own rebrand as Numeris, its for profit arm, BBM Analytics, spent 18 months developing its new nLogic brand and designing a proprietary set of analytics tools to help clients draw insights from Numeris’ large warehouse of TV ratings data.
The cloud-based suite, called the Lens, is designed to help agencies and broadcasters access and analyze Numeris data quickly and efficiently. The first tool available, called Lens Viewers, currently provides access to Numeris’ panel-based measurement of program and station ratings, average audience and demographics.
NLogic president and chief operating officer David Phillips said the big advantage to Lens Viewers is on-demand access to Numeris ratings, as soon as they are published. There’s no delay in updating, downloading or delivering reported data, since nLogic is directly plugged into the Numeris database.
“When we talked to our clients, their number one priority was saving time, so we’ve made everything quick,” Phillips said. “One data point we gathered from our beta test, for example, is that the average run time for a report in Lens Viewers is a matter of seconds, compared to many minutes with most current applications. We believe that’s going to make a big difference for time-pressed clients.”
The next tool in the Lens suite, which nLogic hopes to release this year, is an API that will allow agencies and broadcasters to onboard Numeris data directly into their own business intelligence platforms.
But nLogic has bigger ambitions for Lens than reporting on Numeris ratings. It plans to add more detailed viewership metrics from Numeris’ large database, like gross viewership and frequency. Further tools in the works will help advertisers combine and contextualize Numeris data with third-party data that nLogic is collecting from partners like Kantar Media. Phillips said nLogic is also working with digital and social data providers to help advertisers follow viewers beyond the TV ad.
“If I’m trying to understand the value of an audience, just understanding how many consumed it isn’t always enough,” Phillips said. “You need to understand how it made them feel, what emotions get generated, what they do as a result.”
Lens Viewers has been in testing over the past three months with select partners, one of them being IPG Mediabrands. In a statement, Chris Herlihey, VP of research for Mediabrands, said he was impressed by the platform’s intuitive functionality and speed.
“With more granular data, TV and radio audience analyses have become more complex and reports can be challenging to access,” he said. “NLogic has provided a solution with Lens Viewers that allows our planners and buyers, across Initiative, m2 and UM, to spend less time building complicated reports and more time analyzing viewing patterns.”
“We’re morphing into a tech company,” Phillips said. “It’s an incredibly exciting transformation, and we’re very excited to be able to share the first fruits of it with our clients.”
