Ipsos Wins Contract for Advanced Video Measure in KSA

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, ad currency awarding body Media Rating Company (MRC) has commissioned Ipsos to develop a new Integrated Video Audience Measurement service (IVAM).

Saudi organization MRC (not to be confused with the US standards body of the same acronym) is the only company licensed by the country's General Authority of Media Regulation (Gmedia) to conduct media audience measurement studies. It began developing peoplemeter-based television measurement in 2021 and launched KSA TAM in October 2022. In 2024, the Advertising Industry Board adopted TAM Saudi Arabia as the Kingdom's national standard for measuring the viewing of media content.

The new service combines individual-level panel measurement, digital viewing intelligence and large-scale data sets, and will form the Kingdom's first unified, cross-platform audience measurement currency for television and video. Ipsos will work with RealityMine and Fifty5Blue to capture details of viewing across screens, platforms and locations, both in-home and out-of-home, reporting on a local, regional and global level.

Specifically, the proposed methodology includes deployment of Ipsos' proprietary MediaCell technology through smartphones across a panel of 1,000 individuals; RealityMine's RealityMeter, to measure video consumption through websites and apps, and Fifty5Blue's expertise integrating large-scale data sets and panel data to provide both scale and granularity. In addition, MRC has appointed Fifty5Blue's dedicated analytics software division TechEdge to provide software for customers' own analysis of the data.

MRC Chief Executive Eng. Bandar AlMashhadi says the Kingdom's media landscape, under the supervision of the Ministry of Media, 'is evolving at an extraordinary pace,' and believes that measurement capabilities must evolve 'just as quickly.' He states: 'At MRC, our ambition is to advance audience measurement through a robust, transparent and future-ready currency that reflects the realities of today's viewing behaviour while anticipating the needs of tomorrow.'

'We are incredibly proud to be partnering with MRC and the Saudi media industry on such an ambitious and transformative project,' says Ziad Issa (pictured), CEO Media, Ipsos in MENA. 'The way people watch TV and video has changed dramatically, and audience measurement needs to keep pace. For the first time in the Kingdom, our MediaCell technology will take measurement beyond the living room, capturing viewing both in and out of the home and revealing audiences and viewing occasions that traditional systems simply couldn't see. This programme also demonstrates how innovative, passive measurement technologies can deliver more accurate and representative insights into modern viewing behaviour.'

The new service is targeted for launch in the second half of 2027.

Web sites: www.mrcsaudi.com and www.ipsos.com .