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the first results are being reported to the market,
others are at the deployment and testing phase.
Beyond the technical challenges associated
with measuring increasingly fragmented device
usage, some of the most important unanswered
questions lie in the commercial decisions that will
ultimately be taken around how to use audience
data for monetisation in the future: the question of
tomorrow’s currencies.
During egta’s 2017 Audiovisual Currency Working
Group Meeting (see page 9), part of the discussion
revolved around the question of whether it is
worth the effort trying to build a solution for Total
TV Audience Measurement if all that is produced is
a well calibrated planning currency. Possibly, the
industry may also end up with different currencies
for planning versus buying/billing, instead of a
single one. The current lack of proper tools to
release the data to the market is also an issue that
will need to be overcome.
“Aud i ence measurement
systems and data
ana l yt i cs must be
adapted to the new
rea l i ty.”
/ / The view of television sales
houses
It is well established that, today, viewers watch
television content on many screens other than
TV sets and usually do so via the Internet,
using a variety of connected devices. Viewing
behaviours have evolved faster than the audience
measurement techniques that form the basis of
advertising transactions, and the whole industry,
egta’s television sales house members included,
agrees to say that audience measurement
systems and data analytics must be adapted to
the new reality.
The television sales houses represented by egta
base their arguments for evolved audiovisual
audience measurement on the following premise:
television is – and will remain – the leading mass
communication medium, while also proving
effective for smaller target groups through niche
and thematic channels, whether delivered via
over-the-air broadcast, cable, satellite, Internet
Protocol Television (IPTV) or over-the-top services.
It is the medium that enjoys the most effective,
quantitative and robust measurement, and the use
of electronic people meters is almost universal.
Television not only offers the most accurate and
audited data, it also allows meaningful comparison
between countries. Effective evolution therefore
requires the extension of traditional television
audience measurement (TAM) systems to all other
devices, rather than its replacement by an entirely
new system.
Several countries – a number of which can be
found in Part 3 of this report – have been working
for a few years already on the development of
new audiovisual measurement solutions that can
capture viewing beyond the traditional television
screen and delivery methods. These projects,
which typically involve a hybrid methodology
using two or more types or sources of data, are
at different stages of readiness: in some cases,