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Compare money share against rating share by daypart

Produces a value index (money share ÷ rating share) per channel per daypart, showing whether spend allocated to that channel is proportionate to the audience it delivers. Feeds the decision to demand a rate reduction, reallocate budget toward underpriced dayparts, or hold a channel to current terms in the next negotiation.

What you need first

  • Panel-based audience/rating data (GRPs or audience share) by channel and daypart for the period, from the currency provider (e.g. Nielsen, GfK, AGB people-meter export)
  • Spend or investment data by channel and daypart for the same period, from the monitoring service or internal booking system (e.g. Nielsen Ad Intel, agency buy sheet)
  • Daypart definitions matching the actual planning grid used for the campaign, not the station's own daypart labels
  • Total market spend and total market GRPs for the period, aggregated across all channels, same source and same target audience
  • Target audience definition held constant across both the rating pull and the spend pull (e.g. Adults 18-49)

The procedure

  1. Pull audience data by channel by daypart from the panel export for the analysis period
  2. Pull spend data by channel by daypart from the monitoring or booking source for the same period
  3. Calculate each channel's money share as channel spend divided by total market spend in that daypart
  4. Calculate each channel's rating share as channel GRPs divided by total market GRPs in that daypart
  5. Calculate the value index as money share divided by rating share, times 100, per channel per daypart
  6. Flag channels whose index sits more than 10 points from 100 as over- or underpriced
  7. Split the flagged channels into prime and off-prime to confirm the mispricing is real and not a daypart-mix artifact

Worked through with numbers

Czech free-to-air TV market, target Adults 18+, Prime Time (19:00-23:00), July. Panel export: total market Prime GRPs = 6,000, TV Nova delivers 1,050. Monitoring export: total market Prime spend = EUR 2,400,000, TV Nova books EUR 480,000. Money share = 480,000 / 2,400,000 = 20.0%. Rating share = 1,050 / 6,000 = 17.5%. Index = 20.0 / 17.5 x 100 = 114.3. That clears the +-10 point threshold, so TV Nova gets flagged. Splitting prime from off-prime shows TV Nova's off-prime index is 96, so the overpricing is concentrated in prime rather than station-wide. Reading: TV Nova takes 20% of prime spend for 17.5% of prime audience delivery, about 14% more spend than its ratings justify in that daypart specifically, grounds to negotiate a prime-specific discount rather than a blanket rate cut.

Where it goes wrong

  • Realign target audience before dividing: matching gross rate-card spend against ratings pulled for a different target group produces an index that means nothing.
  • Pull both money share and rating share at the same daypart grain: comparing full-day spend share against prime-only rating share manufactures a false gap.
  • Check a rolling quarter, not one month: a single month's index swings with sponsorship placements and seasonal buys and will misread as a pricing problem.
  • Split prime from off-prime before concluding a channel is fairly priced: an aggregate index near 100 can hide prime overpriced against off-prime underpriced, canceling out in the total.

How to know it is right

Confirm money shares across all channels in the daypart sum to 100% and rating shares sum to 100% before trusting any single channel's index.

Terms used

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