• by Joe Mandese , 8 hours ago

Years in the making, a homegrown syndicated research service developed by one ad trade research body (the Advertising Research Foundation [ARF]) has been accredited with another ad trade research body (the Media Rating Council [MRC]).

The service -- which took shape and was formally branded more than two years ago -- is called DASH, which isn't exactly an acronym but stands for Universe Study of Device and Account Sharing, and has become a key ingredient used by other syndicated media-research suppliers to benchmark and calibrate their own studies about consumer media access and usage patterns.

The first accreditation of an ARF syndicated research service comes nearly a decade after former Nielsen Chief Research Officer Paul Donato joined the ARF in the same role and infused an entrepreneurial spirit that manifested in a number of early syndicated research products seeking to fill in gaps in a rapidly changing consumer media-usage landscape, including an early calibrations of consumer device usage and so-called "attention metrics" that have evolved into an ongoing syndicated DASH service.

The ARF's expansion into commercialized syndicated media-research services comes as another industry trade body, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) is rolling out its own syndicated service aimed directly at advertisers -- Project Aquila -- which actually operates as a separate for-profit company owned by the non-profit ANA.

"Universe estimates are industry infrastructure, essential for calibrating viewership data and projecting audiences," MRC CEO and Executive Director George Ivie says in a statement included in today's DASH accreditation announcement, describing the service as "an unbiased enumeration standard," meaning it could be used by other third-party researchers as the basis of their media universe estimates.

Ivie further characterized DASH's accreditation as "an important foundational data set for the industry," noting that its "data is very meaningful as it relates to determining behaviors and consumption patterns across media as well as providing valuable insights into viewership trends, device usage and streaming services. The MRC expects that the industry will benefit from having an independent universe estimates provider like DASH and those benefits would apply to television, digital, out-of-home and other media."

The ARF, which has partnered with the University of Chicago's National Research Opinion Center (NORC), operates as a syndicated service within the non-profit ARF, which is noteworthy because the ANA said its attorney's advised it to spin Aquila off as a for-profit for legal reasons, details of which have not been disclosed.

While the ARF has not disclosed the revenue currently being generated by its new research services, its 2024 tax year filing with the Internal Revenue Service indicates it's becoming a significant contributor, representing 42% of program revenues, which was already approaching what it takes in from its conferences and was more than five times the revenue it derives from publishing the Journal of Advertising Research.

Interestingly, the ANA reported the contribution of Aquila to its income and assets for the first time in its 2024 tax year filing, attributing $8,934,773 to the for-profit syndicated cross-media research unit, or nearly 11% of the ANA's total asset value that year.

The ANA reported $14,432,500 in income for Aquila on total ANA revenue less expenses of -$1,759,885.