Pay TV audience measurement business spun off, to be expanded
Jun 10
The pay-TV sector’s $3 million audience measurement system will be spun out into a new company, Multiview Analytics. Multiview plans to expand the activities covered by the panel of 10,000 homes that they currently survey to include purchasing data from households and more detailed pay-TV viewing figures.
The new company will be run by former TV research Ian Garland, the former head of lobby group ASTRA. According to Mr Garland, the company will start collecting purchasing data from panel members with “magic wands” – portable scanners that households will use to scan products.
In addition, Multiview will collect further information about consumption of other media such as newspapers, magazines, radio and the internet.
MCN chief executive Anthony Fitzgerald, whose company will take over the new business, said the establishment of MVA as a separate company was crucial to providing credible audience data and verification information to advertisers.
Mr Fitzgerald said the pay-TV industry would not wait the four years it had taken free-to-air and pay-TV ratings measurement company OzTAM to develop new digital TV measurement services such as time-shifted viewing, which it is due to launch next year.
Later this year the panel will start to provide information about the viewership of time-shifted programming and the use of interactive ‘red button’ services.
The Australian, Mediaweek
TGIF June 10th 2009