The 2019 Preakness Stakes on NBC (5/18/19, 5-7 PM) saw a strong Out-of-Home audience delivering more than 1M viewers and peaking at 7 PM with 3.3M.  The viewership skewed 51% A25-54 with 74% of the viewing taking place in bars and restaurants. During race time the Preakness took 65% of all OOH usage.  Comparably, the first of the three major horse races this season, the Kentucky Derby (NBC, 5/14/19, 2:30-7:30 PM), averaged a whopping 3.1M OOH viewers, up nearly +15% over 2018, with 10.1M viewers tuned in during the final hour of the broadcast (6:30-7:30 PM). The excitement surrounding the end-of-race upheaval spiked viewership at 7:15 PM with an audience of 14.7 million viewers. A likely scenario for the smaller Preakness audience is the lack of Derby racers posting at the Stakes.

By examining the OOH viewership that happened across TNT, CBS, and NBC on May 18 we start to understand the relationship between various channels and the importance of curation in OOH environments. The minute-by-minute audience pattern shows us the shifts in viewership from golf on TNT to golf on CBS and finally to the Preakness Stakes on NBC. As viewership begins to grow for an event, the previous event’s audience starts to wane. This shift reflects both the programs being made available to patrons in OOH venues and the changes in focus from one event to another on the part of those patrons. In OOH locations, a viewer’s change in channel focus is done with a turn of their head versus in-home channel changes which are physically made via remote control or tuner.

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Paul Lindstrom is the Head of Research and Analytics at Tunity, an out-of-home (OOH) data measurement company and consumer application which allows users to hear live audio from muted televisions directly through their mobile devices. In his role, Paul supports the creation of various data products, including Tunity's new analytics product, and helps set strategic vision and direction. Prior to Tunity, Paul spent over four decades at Nielsen, where he was responsible for designing and deploying innovative tools, systems, studies, and measurements for new media outlets. He also directed sales, operations, and strategy for Nielsen Strategic Media Research and Nielsen On Location. Paul is an innovation, research, and strategy executive with a successful track record in pioneering business development, product leadership, and research design. His combination of experience with media and custom research, location, and OOH measurements at Nielsen have allowed him to develop a new metric to capture OOH viewing insights based on Tunity’s traffic, tuning, and attention data.