News

Pay TV data delayed til end of year

Research company TNS has won the contract to provide the Australian pay TV industry with an audience measuring service.  

The service, to be known as Multiview, will see data collected directly from 10,000 set top boxes. It will measure the viewing activity of Austar and Foxtel households rather than individuals. It is due to begin before the end of the year. Pay TV operators will be keen to have the system in place before the Christmas break. During the summer non-ratings period, the free TV networks generally put out their worse fare, which benefits pay TV which sees larger audiences. This date is later than the original planned launch date of July 1.

Basic data on pay TV viewing habits is already available via Oztam, which also covers free TV. Information reported from Multiview will also  include  time shift viewing, HD channels, interactive services and video on demand services. It will also measure ad skipping.

The appointment of TNS marks a growing challenge to Nielsen, which dominates the Australian media and advertising industry. Standard Media Index was launched last month with the intention of monitoring media agency spend and at the end of last year Xtreme Information won the contract to provide verification of pay TV advertising logs.

Ian Garland, who will be leading Multiview Analytics, said: “Our partnership marks our commitment to gain new insights into the viewing and behaviour of audiences in subscription TV homes. In addition, the services will provide greater accountability to advertisers across our platforms in areas such as target audiences and interactive advertising.”

Update: Mumbrella did ask TNS whether its appointment had been previously announced as the press release did look vaguely familiar when it arrived this morning. They assured us it had not. Since this they have (very honestly) pointed out that the TNS appointment was made a year ago.

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