The Association of Television Organisations, which is commissioning the TV viewing measurement project, intends to extend it to include out-of-home locations. It will evaluate bids from research agencies during the autumn.
The Association of Television Organisations (ATO) has already received bids for the out-of-home TV viewing measurement project and will begin to consider them shortly. It intends to evaluate them during the autumn and, if all goes according to plan, would like to start measuring from January 2026. "The decision to move in this direction is more important for the future of TV measurement than meeting partial internal deadlines. We need to be sure we are choosing the right solution," said ATO chief executive Michal Jordan in an interview with MediaGuru.com.
Out-of-home measurement is one of the three priorities that Michal Jordan set out when he took up the role last year. The new measurement would add to existing data by providing information on how many viewers are searching for TV and video content outside of their home screens - that is, at cottages, cottages, restaurants or while watching together in squares. These locations are not yet covered by the current project on electronic measurement of TV and video content (PCEM).
The current panel used to measure TV viewing, which is provided for the ATO by Nielsen, would therefore be supplemented by a new mobile metering panel, built independently of the ATO, which would take into account viewing outside the home. "We haven't set out the exact specification of how the out-of-home measurement should be done, but we would like to deliver on the fact that it should be done on the newly created panel. We have received offers in different variants and I am very happy that we have a lot to choose from," says Michal Jordan.
The offers were submitted by Gemius (the current implementer of the Czech Internet traffic measurement NetMonitor), as well as jointly by ResSolution Group and the technology company D-core (both companies employ people who have long-term experience in TV measurement). The offer for the ATO was also prepared by the agency Median (the current implementer of Radioproject's radio listenership measurement and Mediaproject's print readership measurement, as well as the implementer of AdMeter). The Talk / Reppublika agency, which has experience in media measurement from abroad, and the Stem/Mark agency (the implementer of the Radioprojekt and Mediaprojekt measurements) have also expressed interest.
All offers work with mobile phone-based audio measurement (software solutions without special hardware meters). The ATO anticipates that the panel size for out-of-home measurement should be 1000-1200 respondents.
"All of the offers are interesting, each has some specifics and we will need to consider what is most appropriate for the next phase of development of existing measurement. Personally, I see the future of TV viewership measurement as growing and improving through sub-projects that will be packaged on top of the backbone one and merged into unified data through data fusion," says Michal Jordan.
Although electronic measurement of TV viewership has been running in the Czech Republic since 1997, the project has not been able to expand to other out-of-home locations in that time. No way has been found to make the measurement sufficiently robust and economically sustainable. The ATO CEO was newly inspired by the experience of Poland, where out-of-home measurement was successfully launched three years ago. "Poland followed an evolutionary path. In addition to the TV panel built by Nielsen (the same implementer as in the Czech Republic), data from the smartphone-based Gemius panel with measurement software is used. Nielsen then combines this data with data on TV viewing in households, which it collects through its own panel," says Jordan. But similar project extensions and panel connections exist in other countries, and other markets are addressing these issues as well.
For domestic TV operators, the inclusion of measurement of other TV viewing locations could also be of interest because of the anticipated higher overall viewership, and the associated increase in commercial space for advertising sales.
Source: mediaguru.cz
