Subscription TV Measurement Firm Launched

In Australia, the subscription television (STV) industry has created an independent company to provide research and audience measurement services to its members and the broader media and marketing community.

The new firm - Multiview Analytics (MVA) - will launch on 1 July, in advance of the roll out of STV's 10,000 home audience measurement panel. It will be owned by pay-TV sales company MCN, and led by TV researcher Ian Garland, who is currently Commercial Director at ASTRA (the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association). While MVA is a fully owned subsidiary of MCN, the company will be run independently and operate an advisory council made up of STV members, media buyers and advertisers.

Garland, who earlier in his career was Head of Product Marketing & Development for Nielsen Media Research in New York, and MD of ACNielsen Media Australia, says the new panel is designed to complement the current OzTAM and RegTAM ratings used by subscription TV. MVA will manage and supply the subscription TV ratings and interactive advertising response information from the return path panel, and the first reports for the new service are expected to be available in the final quarter of 2009.

In addition, MVA will co-ordinate and develop the industry's advertising spot verification service, and provide assistance to ASTRA on research requirements.

The firm will also collect purchasing data from members of pay-TV homes, to enable advertisers to analyse household purchasing information and track the effect on sales when homes are exposed to their ads on pay-TV and free-to-air TV.

Audience measurement data will be complemented by additional surveys tracking the consumption of other media such as newspapers, magazines, radios and the Internet.

MCN CEO Anthony Fitzgerald said that MTV would be critical to providing better information for his firm's advertising partners.

'I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with the range of channels and platforms and to further demonstrate why subscription TV is the rightly seen as the most innovative and progressive medium in Australia,' added Garland.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.