• by Wayne Friedman , April 18, 2008

Starcom USA and TNS Media Research have announced an agreement in which Starcom will be the first media agency to take TNS' new DIRECTView national TV measuring service.

Based on satellite TV distributor's DirecTV's national footprint, the announcement claims that DIRECTView will be the largest national audience measuring service in the U.S. DirecTV's has nearly 17 million subscribers nationally.

Earlier this year, DirecTV and TNS announced the creation of DIRECTView, a national audience measurement panel of 100,000 DIRECTV subscribers who can opt-in to participate.

Nielsen Media Research's national TV panel, for example, is now at some 12,000 households, with plans to triple its size by 2011. That panel is more broadly based across cable, satellite, and non-digital homes, using Nielsen's own propriety measuring technology.

In response, Tracey Scheppach, senior vice president and video innovations director for Starcom USA, says: "It's progress, not perfection." She says the goal is to get second-by-second TV viewing data from TNS starting in the third quarter of this year. She adds that the TNS/DIRECTView data will also yield demographic information.

DIRECTView uses set-top box data that will give Starcom next-day analysis through InfoSys, a widely used media analysis and planning system.

Starcom and TNS struck a previous measurement deal using set-top box data in November 2006. At the time, Starcom agreed to be the first media agency to take data from some 320,000 subscribers of the Charter Communications cable system in Los Angeles.

Many media agency analysts believe set-top box data from cable or satellite TV distributors will offer more granular TV analysis--going beyond the traditional Nielsen sample size to determine behavior research of consumers for marketers to use in the future.