CONSULTANT FOR MEDIA MONITORING TO ASSESS THE REACH AND RECALL FOR BOTH TV AND RADIO PROMOTIONAL ADS FOR DEMAND GENERATION ON DAIRY CONSUMPTION

Introduction

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is a Swiss-based foundation launched at the United Nations in 2002 to tackle the human suffering caused by malnutrition. Working with governments, businesses, and civil society, we aim to transform food systems to deliver more nutritious foods for all people, especially the most vulnerable.

GAIN Ethiopia is implementing the Better Dairy for All (BDFA) project to improve nutrition outcomes by increasing dairy consumption in the Amhara Region. As part of its demand-generation strategy, GAIN has engaged a media service provider to broadcast culturally tailored TV and Radio promotional ads in Amharic across 16 urban woredas.

This Terms of Reference (ToR) outlines the requirements for hiring a qualified consulting firm to design and conduct an Impact Evaluation of the TV promotional campaign to determine its reach, reception, and effect the whole community-level behaviors, especially among caregivers of young children and low-income households.

Background

Better Dairy for All (BDFA) Project is one of the projects implemented by GAIN Ethiopia in collaboration with other partners in the Amhara region.

. The objective of the BDFA Project is to improve the consumption of dairy products through behavioral change and awareness towards dairy product consumption, improving access to safe dairy products, and creating an enabling environment by collaborating with stakeholders along the value chain.

The project aims to improve nutritional outcomes by increasing dairy consumption among households in selected urban areas. The project is being implemented in 16 urban woredas/city administrations and 05 rural woredas: Debre Tabor, Wereta, Gondar, Bahir Dar, Dangla, Injibara, Mota, Finote Selam, Burie, Debre Markos, Degen, Debre Birhan, Kombolcha, Dessie, Haike, and Woldiya. And five rural woredas: Libokemkem, Fogera, Dangla Zuria, Fagitalokoma, and Banja woredas.

To influence social and behavior change, GAIN launched TV and radio promotional ads using pre-developed creative concepts. The radio ads are broadcast 14 times a week (both Amharic and Agewgna language (two times a week)) with 45 second ad spots at each broadcast. We have three types of messages broadcast with radio ads (128 seconds transmitted more than 50 spots and stopped in April 2025 and the other two ads will be broadcasted.

These ads are aired 14 times per week through Amhara Radio for semi-urban residents, 5 times per week broadcast on Abay TV and 3 times per week on EBS TV for total community who lives in town administrations broadcasted for 45 seconds during prime time, excluding fasting seasons. We have broadcast one advertisement from the end of May until July, 13 spots (10 with Abay TV and 3 on EBS TV).

To ensure accountability and inform future communication strategies, GAIN seeks to evaluate the effectiveness and reach of this media campaign and the audience’s perception in terms of recall, comprehension, and opinions about how it might improve behavior change regarding dairy consumption.

The project targets children aged 6 months to 7 years in rural woredas by radio promotional Ads and the total population in urban city administrations by TV and radio promotional Ads. This assignment mainly focuses on the low-income households in the 16 urban woredas and 05 rural woredas as mentioned above

Objective

General objective:

To assess and monitor the reach, frequency, and recall of the BDFA TV and radio promotional ads, and to evaluate how the ads influenced the capacity (knowledge and awareness), motivation (attitudes, beliefs, and intent), and opportunity (perceived access and enabling factors) of target audiences to consume dairy products. The evaluation will also capture audience feedback on clarity, relevance, and resonance, and generate actionable recommendations to inform future nutrition-focused media campaigns.

Specific objective:

• To assess how well the ads reached our target population as well as community exposure
• To determine if the audience understood and remembered the core message (aided and unaided recall, call to action clarity)
• To better understand how well the ads influenced the thinking and actions of the audience around dairy consumption (emotional response and behavioral intention:
• To evaluate how the promotional advertisement influenced the audience’s:
• • Capacity (e.g., confidence and perceived ability to take action or change behavior),
  • Motivation (e.g., beliefs, attitudes, and intent to consume dairy), and
  • Opportunity (e.g., perceived affordability)
  • To generate actionable, CMO-informed recommendations to strengthen future BDFA messaging and other nutrition-focused campaigns.
• To capture audience feedback regarding the clarity, relevance, and cultural appropriateness of each ad.
• To generate actionable recommendations for the future of the project and other nutrition-focused media campaigns.

Scope of the assignment

The impact evaluation will cover:

• Geographic Coverage: 16 urban and 05 rural woredas of the Amhara region.
• The population group for the TV ads assessment is the whole community group in 16 woredas mentioned above.
• Target population for the radio ads assessment includes 05 woredas caregivers/ parents of children of age 06 month to 7 years old and caregivers/ parents in 16 urban woredas.
• The assessment time the media ads: Ads aired between July 20th, 2025, and December 05th , 2025 (non-fasting periods)
• Behavioral Lens – CMO Framework: The evaluation will be designed using the CMO (Capacity, Motivation, Opportunity) behavior change framework. All tools, sampling, and analysis should be assessed:
  • Capacity: Self-confidence and perceived ability of individuals to act on the message (e.g., feeling capable of affording dairy)
  • Motivation: Internal drivers, attitudes, and intentions regarding dairy consumption
  • Opportunity: External or contextual factors such as accessibility, affordability, and cultural support that enable or block behavior change
• Research Approach: Mixed methods (quantitative survey, qualitative focus groups or interviews)
• The target population group for the TV ads assessment is the whole community group in 16 urban woredas mentioned above (teens and above). Target Population for the radio ads assessment is households (especially those with caregivers/ parents of children 6 months–7 years in 5 rural woredas). In both areas, there is a specific interest in low-income populations and understanding reach / exposure among these households. However, the sampling should cover all households in these areas, as detailed below.
• Sampling: Stratified sampling across woredas, with random sampling of households within woredas. Results provided should be representative of the (collective) population of households in the 21 urban / semi-urban woredas and, separately, the population of households in the 5 semi-rural woredas. There should be a disaggregation of results by the different segments we aim to reach – gender, age, and income level. Sample sizes should be sufficient to estimate reach separately for:
• Low-income households
• Parents/caregivers of children aged 6 months and 7 years
• Teenagers
• Youth
• Men
• Women

Findings from this impact evaluation will inform the refinement of BDFA’s ongoing media strategy, improve targeting and message framing in future campaigns, and contribute to the evidence base for nutrition-focused demand generation interventions in Ethiopia

Tasks and Responsibilities of the Evaluator/Consultant

• Design of methodology
• Ensure the approach is aligned with the Capacity, Motivation, Opportunity (CMO) framework to guide data collection and analysis)
• Sampling design and approach with the justification separately for both for TV and Radio ad broadcasting.
• Developing and piloting data collection tools (surveys, FGD guides, KII checklists), using Survey CTO where relevant
• Conducting household-level quantitative surveys in selected woredas to measure exposure and perceptions, as well as reasons for non-exposure
• Organizing FGDs and/or interviews with target groups to gain in-depth insights on perceptions
• Throughout all steps in the process, ensuring data quality, compliance with government regulations / acquiring needed permissions, ethical standards, and informed consent.
• Critically analyzing broadcast logs and viewership reports provided by the media house.
• Assessing the relevance, recall, and resonance of aired content – Analyse message clarity, cultural appropriateness, and emotional response, include audience perception of spokesperson, visuals, and language used

Critical analysis of:

• • Media house-provided broadcast logs and viewership/listener-ship reports
  • Recall, reach, and frequency data (including from survey and media data)
  • Perceived clarity, cultural relevance, and resonance of ad content
• Producing draft and final reports, including summary presentations for validation workshops.
• Presenting key findings and recommendations to GAIN and stakeholders – Provide recommendations tailored to improving Capacity, Motivation, and Opportunity among different audience groups
• Accountability for the correct data reporting on findings of recall and reach findings of Radio and TV Ads

EXPECTED MAJOR DELIVERABLE

Deliverable	Due Date
Inception report with detailed methodology, work plan and tools	Aug , 2025
Ethics approval and enumerator training report	Aug , 2025
Field data collection completed (surveys, FGDs) – including translation and localization where necessary and daily field quality check reports and enumerator performance summaries.	October ,2025
Draft evaluation report submitted	October ,2025
Validation workshop and feedback session conducted	November , 2025
Final evaluation report and slide deck	December 1, 2025

Responsibilities of GAIN

GAIN will be responsible for:

• Providing access to the full Radio and TV ads content and broadcasting schedule.
• Sharing any media monitoring data already collected.
• Coordinating access to project woredas and introducing the evaluation team to local stakeholders.
• Reviewing and approving deliverables in a timely manner.
• Providing feedback, logistical guidance, and any necessary documentation to facilitate fieldwork.

Assessment and selection criteria

• Proposals will be reviewed by the Selection Committee using the following key criteria:

• Eligibility Criteria
• Interested and eligible bidders must have:
• Renewed Trade License, VAT Registration Certificate, and TIN Certificate.
• Overall experience of 5–8 years in successfully managing similar assignments, such as radio and TV reach and recall assessments.
• Strong understanding of the local context in the target areas.
• Proven experience in conducting reach assessments in the Amhara Region, particularly within the designated project target areas.