• by Wayne Friedman , May 11, 2017

A new viewing metric for over-the-top content (OTT) is coming from comScore.

The media research company announced it will measure U.S. household viewing of over-the-top (OTT) content on TV screens. The service is based on the company’s Total Home Panel, that measures consumer behavior across home network-connected devices.

“With very limited insight into viewing behavior across providers, the OTT market has largely been a black box,” stated Mike Rich, comScore vice president of emerging products.

The new product will measure dozens of OTT content providers, including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and YouTube.

It will enable advertising clients to find household reach, audience size and demographics, along with a variety of usage metrics. Data can be segmented for cord-cutting and cord-never homes, as well as those with a cable or satellite subscription.

The company’s Total Home Panel measures media consumption across more than 12,500 households and 150,000 active devices per month.

In 2015, Nielsen partnered with Roku to measure OTT viewing. Last September, Nielsen launched Digital Content Ratings, a service providing daily measurement of audiences across digital content, including video and text -- activities that include OTT platforms.