I am being asked by lot of marketer what is TRP or Television Rating Point ? But I was never good at defining TRP in one sentence although I understand what it mean and how it is being calculated. That took me to write this article to give a clear understanding about TRP.
I googled to find a one liner definition of TRP and I got the first answer from quora, “Television Rating Point (TRP) is a tool provided to judge which programmes are viewed the most. This gives us an index of the choice of the people and also the popularity of a particular channel”. This is a good answer as long as you do not know the use of TRP. From that context, TRP is a relative number where higher number means popularity of a channel / program / time slot etc.
But if you know the TRP of a program (like 3), what does this number mean?
TRP or Television Rating Point is a function of two things:
- Reach
- Time spend
Reach: Percentage of your target audience watched the program. If size of your target audience is 1000 and “program A” has been watch by 60 people than Reach of your program is 6% (=60/1000).
Time Spend: portion of the program watched by the audience. Suppose 6 person of your target audience has watched a program named “Program A”. Duration of the program was 100 minute. 3 person has watched the program for 10 minutes and rest 3 has watched for 90 minutes. So, on an average the 50% of the program has been watched by your target audience (=([3*10]+[3*90])/(100*6)).
TRP: (Reach) 6 * (Time spend) 50% = 3
So, if your audience watch the full(100%) portion of that program then Reach and TRP of the program will be same.
Once again, TRP is the function of Reach and Time Spend. To increase TRP of a program, you need to increase Reach or Time spend of the program. Reach is dependent on promotion where Time spend depend on quality of the program. Advertiser invest in a channel or program based on TRP to get higher return. Advertiser not only choose the high TRP program, sometime they choose low trp program.
TRP or Television Rating Point can be found for Channel, program, time slot etc. TRP of a program or a channel or a time slot should be different for different period or time frame.
