• by Wayne Friedman , March 24, 2010

Boosting its research efforts to new levels -- possibly setting up a challenge to the existing TV currency system -- major media group Starcom Media Group Exchange has done a deal with media researcher Rentrak for its new National Upfront Package of set-top-box viewing data. 

The Rentrak data will represent one of the biggest sources of TV data from set-top boxes.

Currently, there are 2 million homes and 5 million set-top boxes from AT&T's U-verse video programming service. With Rentrak's just-announced deal with Dish Network, the TV and media research company will now have viewing data coming from 15 million set-top boxes.

"This is what makes it so exciting," says Tracey Scheppach, senior vice president of innovations director at SMGX. "15 million set-top boxes in the market are getting freed up." By comparison, she notes that Nielsen's current TV sample size is around 12,000.

This is the second big media agency deal for Rentrak's National Upfront Package. A week ago, Rentrak struck a similar deal with Zenith Media. Its national upfront package is derived from its Rentrak's TV Essentials set-top product.

"We wanted to go into ad agencies to sell current and historical information to get them started. As they talk with the networks, they have another currency to [address in ] those discussions," says Bill Livek, chief executive officer of Rentrak Corp.

The deal is a four-month license -- in time for the upfront market. Scheppach says the deal includes valuable second-by-second viewing data going back to September 2008.

But she stopped short of saying whether the data would be used to make specific deals. "This is to evaluate national and local audiences," she said. "This is about moving the conversation about where it needs to be."

Starcom has made deals in the past with second-by-second data on a few non-rated cable networks, including HD channels.

Starcom has done research set-top box deals with Kantar Media and the Charter cable system in Los Angeles, later adding DirecTV. It also has a set-top box data deal with TiVo and TRA, which incorporates shopper data.

"We have been doing some deals in the past with set-top boxes. The difference here is that this is for multiple markets," says Scheppach.

In addition, Starcom has made a separate deal with the NBC owned-and-operated station group in which Starcom will evaluate its stations audiences using Rentrak data.

The Rentrak data doesn't offer demographic breakdowns -- key for many TV deals -- just impressions. But Livek says the data can be filtered with other syndicated research.

Rentrak has set-top data deals with 40 television networks, as well as 14 television stations in six markets, including outlets from Lin Broadcasting, Sunshine, Media General and Sinclair Broadcast Group.