Rentrak, Mastercard To Merge TV Audience, Consumer Transactional Data

by Joe Mandese, May 23, 2012, 8:12 AM

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Nielsen rival Rentrak this morning announced a deal with credit card giant MasterCard that it says will integrate Rentrak's TV audience data with MasterCard's “consumer trends and insights” derived from billions of payment transactions. Rentrak said the deal is intended to provide advertisers and agencies with “deeper insights into media consumption and aggregated consumer buyer behavior to help them reach their intended audiences more effectively.”

The deal is reminiscent of one that Rentrak chief Bill Livek orchestrated years ago when he was overseeing Simmons Market Research Bureau (now part of Experian). That data integration ultimately led to the creation of Mastercard’s Transactional Data Solutions database, which so powerful, it was essentially taken in-house by the credit services marketer.

The deal is also significant, because it comes at a time when numerous Rentrak competitors, including Nielsen, TRA Analytics, and others, are striking agreements to integrate their media audience exposure data with consumer transactional databases.

“This collaboration will allow local and national advertisers and agencies, networks and stations to plan, buy and sell TV programs on the basis of consumer product consumption trends ranging across a wide variety of categories including retail, telecommunications, grocery, entertainment, travel and family and quick service restaurants to name a few,” Rentrak said in this morning’s announcement, adding, “Under the agreement, MasterCard Advisors, a unit of MasterCard Worldwide, will provide Rentrak anonymous, aggregated insights on consumer spending behavior and trends within each category.”

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