Image generated via: Google Gemini, Nano Banana
As promised, we went live with MICOS – EVALUATE on 1st December 2025. The launch faced initial challenges, as TV viewership was at a record low following the islandwide floods that occurred three days prior, with the nation still in recovery. Although December was expected to be a heavily advertised month, the numbers were lower than anticipated due to these unforeseen weather conditions. This article outlines our findings and observations based on data collected from 200 established households. We project this number to grow to 500 by April 2025.
Viewership On The Rise
| Week | Total Ratings |
|---|---|
| DEC 01 – 07 (49) | 81,259 |
| DEC 08 – 14 (50) | 96,398 |
| DEC 15 – 21 (51) | 116,588 |
| DEC 22 – 28 (52) | 124,338 |
It took approximately three weeks to TV Viewership to return to normal after the disaster. Some households had sever damages that required time to recover. Certain areas were impacted by power overloads and some households had changed the layout of household during the reset after the floods.
Overall, 81 of the 200 households experienced flood impacts, from minor issues such as telecommunication disruptions to 22 households that were forced to spend at least one night outside their homes. By week 51, 21 households reported that their TV viewership habits had not yet returned to normal. However, the rapid increase observed in week 52 indicates a reset, suggesting a return to normalcy is on the horizon.
Alignment (not) with Social Media
We would like to use YouTube as the comparison platform as it provides full-length viewership capability. Sri Lanka reportedly has 8.82 million YouTube users. In a brief study, we observed that, on a typical day, Sinhala TV teledrama episodes receive over 5 million views collectively on the platform. Assuming there are over 15 million regular TV viewers in Sri Lanka, our findings do not fully align with the high social media numbers, aside from a few outliers. This discrepancy may be due to factors in counting viewership. For reference, a single YouTube view is counted as 30 seconds of video consumption. In our sample of 200 households (approximately 800 people), one person watching for one minute is approximately equivalent to 0.125 rating points.
CosNet v4 (Diary System) vs MICOS (Face Recognition)
There are differences between two systems and MICOS seems to be more fluctuating. While we are planning to discuss in a separate dedicated article, we just need to highlight strengths and weaknesses in both systems.
- CosNetV4 – Weaker by design due to manual inputs, but stronger established panel with households around the country.
- MICOS – Stronger by design due to automated AI-driven technical superiority, but is yet to reach its full maturity of 500 households.
Subscribers are Growing
We are pleased to announce that MTV Channels have subscribed to MICOS, joining the community of broadcasters leveraging data-driven decision-making. This marks a historic milestone, as it is the first time an SRL company has partnered with a CMG company. With this partnership, all leading broadcasters now have access to MICOS data and are using it to make informed decisions.
Among advertising agencies, Media Factory/Third Shift Media and Dentsu Grant Group have been the frontrunners in subscribing to MICOS–EVALUATE and have provided invaluable feedback on the user experience. We hope that other agencies, who have contributed valuable creative ideas so far, will soon subscribe and benefit from the platform’s highly accurate data.
‘MICOS User Group Monthly Meeting’ Coming Soon
At Media Innovations, we believe that data should connect to systems, and systems should connect to people. The most effective way to engage with people is by fostering a community. To this end, we are launching a virtual meeting series aimed at strengthening media planning practices in Sri Lanka. Each session will last 1.5 hours and will be conducted monthly via Microsoft Teams.