The television industry is about to call for tenders to supply portable people meters for its ratings service, Oztam. The main tenderers are expected to offer the same type of technology that was rejected by the radio industry less than two years ago when it opted to stay with the old diary system instead.
David Rogerson, who is Arbitron’s senior consultant in the Asia-Pacific region, one of the companies likely to be a frontrunner with its personal pager like device, has told radioinfo: “TV may well decide to lead the way with portable electronic audience measurement. New viewing technologies now available to the consumer, combined with a more mobile viewing audience, are taking the need for portable measurement in that direction”.
According to a report in the SMH, TV, which is already measured electronically via a stationary set top box in the home, is keen to measure out of home viewing, as it believes that it is missing out on a large mobile audience.
Early trends coming from Canada, which has fully adopted Arbitron’s portable people meters (PPM), indicate a significant amount of younger viewing, in particular, is done outside of home.
Oztam Chairman, Doug Peiffer, told the SMH, “When out-of-home viewing is measured, younger viewing increases, some of your daytime viewing increases and cable viewing increases for sport”. Peiffer also argued that for shows such as Australian Idol, 70% of viewing among 16-24 year olds is outside the home.
Rogerson says: “TV technology is changing rapidly with the advent of digital recording devices that allow for time shifted recording. This, in turn, leads to changes in people’s viewing habits. Due to government legislation, radio – by comparison – has primarily been an analogue delivery medium and, consequently, is only now able to consider the move to digital. Regardless, PPM has the ability to provide multi media measurement of both mediums, while identifying the platform viewing or listening has taken place on.”
COO of major media buying agency, Starcom, and President of The Media Federation of Australia, John Sintras, told the SMH, “Our TV rating service at the moment is high quality. There’s more work to be done on media research outside TV. Frankly, a lot of other media have a long way to catch up to where TV is”.