A numbers game

There’s been big excitement about recent TV shows and their viewing figures lately: Gladiators 6.4m, Mr Bates vs The Post Office 9.2m, Traitors final 6.9m etc.

Everyone thought ‘appointment TV’ – when you watch a programme at the time it’s broadcast – was dead thanks to streaming channels, but it’s thriving.

It’s nothing on the old days of course, when we’d gather around the box together for soaps and other big events. Back then the big hitters were huge. Remember these?

Dallas - Who shot JR? 21.6m

Charles marries Di: 28.4m

EastEnders - Den serves Angie divorce papers: 30.15m

I used to like checking these stats in the Radio Times when I was little, to see whether the programmes I watched were on there. I thought that I was somehow contributing, and that we were all being tracked.

It’s a bit different to that

These figures are in fact measured by just 5,000 households who are part of the very 80s sounding Barb panel – the British Audience Research Board. They get sent a monitoring device – a ‘people meter’ – which gets attached to their TV sets. The 13,000-odd people in these households are taken to represent the entire viewing population.

People wonder how you can tell the viewing habits of a nation in this way, but apparently you can. It’s very trusted by the channels, and of course, the advertisers.

Fortunately, we can be a lot more accurate with our data

There are many ways to check what’s hot and what’s not when it comes to your marketing content:

• Use Google Analytics to track which pages of your website attract the most attention. Metrics such as page views, time on page, and bounce rate can identify the content that resonates most with your audience.

• Leverage your email marketing platform to monitor who is opening your emails and engaging with the content. Look at open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to understand which topics or formats are the most compelling.

• Pay attention to your social media interactions. Analyse likes, shares, comments, and direct messages to gauge the impact of your posts.

This data can provide intriguing insights into what really interests your audience, which can help you to refine your content to increase engagement.

It can often make for encouraging reading too: that article you hesitated to post might just capture the attention of an unsuspecting crowd, if not a nation.

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