New at Penn: WARC

Penn Libraries has recently added WARC to its rich collection of business intelligence resources. WARC is an international marketing database that includes over 6,000 marketing case studies as well as trend analysis, research reports, and other business intelligence information,  For media industry researchers it is chock full of useful and timely reports and data.

WARC stands for World Advertising Research Center. It has been around since 1985 and is also the publisher of International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research and International Journal of Market Research (available from the Penn Libraries e-resources). If you do literature searches on media effects, persuasion, or communication campaigns it is not unusual to pull up articles in the advertising and marketing realm in journals such as these. Let's just say these folks care about persuasion like nobody's business (pun intended).

WARC's Data section contains advertising expenditure data from 80 global markets, a comparison of global media costs (compare costs by market, medium, target audience and time period), Adspend forecasts for 12 key countries, and a wide range of media usage statistic, including TV viewing data from over 70 countries and time spent by media comparisons (television, radio, internet, newspapers, magazines and cinema) in 10 non-US markets.

WARC's Topic section is useful for sifting out soft drink and automotive reports from reports in Media and Entertainment, or Telecoms, to mention the categories of most interest to communication researchers. 

The Industry Trends section has a Media/Tech category where you can find such articles as Cloud Gaming: What the End of the Console Means for Gamers, Brands and the Global Gaming Industry (August 2012). 

International Media and Communication Statistics from NORDICOM

Even the most qualitative researcher from time to time asks me for media use stats and I'm not always able to deliver. "There is a lack of comparative statistics on media communication," NORDICOM editors point out in the Foreword of their compilation of world media stats. A copy of A Sampler of International Media and Communication Statistics 2010, compiled by Sara Leckner and Ulrika Facht, is available on the web. (We also have a copy in print here in the ASC Library.) The volume provides access, distribution, revenue, and usage numbers the internet, radio, television, and newspapers for countries throughout the world.

TV by the Numbers

Here's a useful new site for television industry statistics: TV by the Numbers. Goals as stated by the founders are:

• Provide an online warehouse of useful data about the television industry
• Provide thoughtful and timely analysis on the data, news, and issues that drive the industry
• Make the data easier to understand and absorb both through analysis and charting techniques
• Prognosticate on the future
• Be a favorite destination of those interested or involved in the data that drives the industry

Their publishing schedule is ambitious. Overnight ratings (of only these major networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW) are posted daily; once a week posts include (on specific days I won't spell out here) top 20 most time-shifted broadcast shows, top 20 most time-shifted cable shows, weekly broadcast network TV ratings, season to date ratings, top 20 broadcast and cable TV ratings, top 20 broadcast shows by age group, top 20 syndicated shows, top 20 most time-shifted syndicated shows, top 20 cable network shows, morning news TV ratings, daytime TV ratings, cable news TV ratings, top 20 sports TV ratings, and top 20 new shows TV ratings.

The site also hosts mini-articles and visitor comments on the horse-race of it all.

TV International Sourcebook 2008

TV International Sourcebook 2008 is out (and now available in ASC Reference). From Informa Telecoms & Media, this useful resource supplies global television industry data for over 70 countries, featuring
-- TV databases for all of the major territories, featuring year-on-year subscriber figures, subscription revenues and average subscription costs across pay TV platforms
--Channel profiles: country-by-country, daily hours of broadcasting, household penetration rates and revenue source for the national channels
--Viewing and programming: information on average daily viewing, share of viewing by channel, split of transmission hours by programme genre, top 10 program listings as well as program budgets for leading national channels
--Pay TV figures: including growth and penetration rates across all pay TV platforms, subscriber figures by operator and subscription revenue data
--Advertising data: for tracking advertising expenditure, share of advertising revenue by channel, top 10 advertisers and product categories and TV advertising limits
--Company specific data: subscriber information, financial highlights and ownership structure information for many of the leading broadcasters
--IPTV figures, including penetration rates and broadband data
--Comparison tables and rankings for all of the featured countries

Countries Covered: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia & Montenegro, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, UK, Uruguay, US, US Hispanic, Venezuela