New audience measurement for Nine clients

It’s an ongoing question for TV networks and their advertisers: how do you provide details of audiences across multiple platforms, especially in the landscape of increased competition and sliding Free to Air numbers?

Nine is the latest network to announce new measurement for its clients until OzTAM introduces new cross-platform data to reflect online numbers. OzTAM has been trialling audience measurement with tablets and smartphones via IBB Consulting Group and measuring 10% of panel homes with PC’s since 2012.

Described as “a ground-breaking new reporting tool,” Platform Agnostic Ratings for Content (PARC) will measure media consumption of content across multiple platforms.

Peter Wiltshire, Group Sales & Marketing Director, Nine Entertainment Co., said: “As content is increasingly consumed across multiple touch points we need to measure audiences across the entire life cycle of the content journey – live broadcast, encores, playback, and online long and short-form.

“As a cross-platform media owner we have wanted this data for quite a while, and our agency partners have been crying out for it. PARC is the solution we have built while we wait for an industry-delivered currency.

“This is the first step in Nine Entertainment Co. being able to measure cross-platform consumption for our partners and sponsors across our major pieces of content. We are already in-market with the second season of The Block, selling audience delivery using this new calculation.”

Nine’s press release claims the current method of quoting stream starts as a metric of measuring long-form video is in no way reflective of how TV is measured. ‘PARC addresses this by averaging audience volumes at every moment of the online stream, rather than just focusing on the stream start, effectively mimicking a TV rating. A video stream with an average audience of 20,000-30,000 usually has stream starts in excess of 100,000,’ it says.

‘Adding the de-duplicated audience of a piece of content watched either live, or via playback or encores to the online video metric creates a Total Viewer Exposure number. This number captures the total audience regardless of screen or platform,’ it continues.

A House Husbands season average of 889,622, increases by 43 per cent to 1.27 million across all screens using PARC.

But it isn’t a number that can be measured alongside the competition.

Steve Weaver, Group Director, Research & Analytics, Nine Entertainment Co., said: “While not a trading currency, PARC will help to close the current gap in understanding how our audiences are consuming content, and the brands who partner with this content.

“NEC will transition to OzTAM’s official cross-platform metric once it is available, because an official trading currency panel across all content platforms should be the ultimate objective for us all.”

In March OzTAM invited expressions of interest in tendering for its audience research service contract, ahead of Nielsen’s contract expiry at the end of 2017.

“This process will help us determine the approach to delivery of OzTAM’s measurement service from 2018 onwards,” OzTAM chief executive Doug Peiffer said recently.