Rentrak Kicks Off New TV/Video Measuring Service

by Wayne Friedman , February 19, 2013

3Ladies-WatchTV Rentrak says it is starting a first-of-its-kind TV measuring service, estimating all TV viewership of a program for up to one month.

The upstart Portland, Ore.-based media researcher says its new TV viewing service, Total Audience Viewing Report, will combine time-shifted and video-on-demand viewing showing "increased viewing from the total audience for all ad-supported prime time network and cable programs over seven, 14 and 28 days."

"We believe in leaving no 'eyeballs' behind and realize that DVR and VOD viewing continues to grow greatly beyond seven days," said Bill Livek, chief executive officer of Rentrak, in a release. "With a report that looks at a month of TV viewing, both networks and their agency clients can discover the true audience shift and lift beyond a week."

Rentrak says no other TV viewing report has shown the total audience viewing lift of program audiences over a month period of time.

Some examples: CW's "The Vampire Diaries" showed that more than half of the total audience -- within 28 days came from DVRs and VOD. ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," Fox's "New Girl" and NBC's "Revolution" had more than one-third of its audience coming from DVR and VOD.

Some cable programs posted stronger numbers. TNT's "Rizzoli & Iles" and FX's "Sons of Anarchy" each had 60% of its 28-day total coming from DVR and VOD; Bravo's "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills," Comedy Central's "Tosh.0," Syfy's "Haven," MTV's "Teen Mom 2," USA Network's "Burn Notice," A&E's "Duck Dynasty" and BET's "Sister Wives" had half of their respective total audiences after 28 days coming from DVR and VOD.

Rentrak says The Total Audience Report factors in live audience numbers, VOD audience and DVR playback from its base 22 million television homes and census-based video-on-demand behavior from over 100 million TVs.

media measurement, metrics, tv, video

4 comments about "Rentrak Kicks Off New TV/Video Measuring Service".

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Rob Frydlewicz from DentsuAegis, February 20, 2013 at 10:09 a.m.
More and more, audience accumulation for TV is mirroring that of magazines, e.g., it takes at least 2-3 months for magazine titles to reach the audience levels that are reported by MRI, and used by media agencies when they put together media plans.
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Robynne Wildman from Standing With Agnes Nixon, February 20, 2013 at 1:01 p.m.

It only makes sense to do this. Viewing habits have changed over time and the 'ratings' needs to keep up.

Maybe some shows will be given longer to find an audience now.

John Grono from GAP Research, February 20, 2013 at 5:06 p.m.

Very interesting data, but mainly for channel programmers and schedulers, as well as for content creators and producers. Given the reaction to talk about moving C3 to C7, I await to see how "C28" will be embraced by advertisers. There is still a purpose in the data for advertisers who are purely interested in long-term brand building as opposed to immediate sales gains (yes I am so old I remember those days), or for branded content campaigns.

Steve Sternberg from The Sternberg Report, February 20, 2013 at 6:23 p.m.

So, this is household data from a sample that is not representative of the country? How does this benefit anyone? Can't Nielsen provide that type of data on request?