asi TV symposium:: Olympic experience intensifies measurement debate

Presentations on Olympic viewing opened the 2012 ASI European TV Symposium in Prague but all the significant rises in audiences across many platforms just accentuated the calls for platform focused, consistent industry measurement.

Margo Swadley, head of audiences at BBC Vision, said that red button viewing made up 11% of the total Olympic viewing audience. A total of 24 million viewers accessed it at some point but it was not possible to break that audience down between red button users and those accessing via the EPG.

Swadley added: “To do so is a BBC priority. We have an internal measure but not a currency and our data doesn’t give us a competitive view. In the UK there is a strong desire but no perfect solution out there. We would expect to see a fusion answer.”

NBC Universal’s president of research and media development, Alan Wurtzel, said it was a major demand from clients in the USA but was really hard to solve – and expensive.

Wurtsel said: “We are coming together in the States to try to do it. It would cost US$100 million to create a new currency but think we need a platform not a measurement, something flexible enough to measure those who are viewing and drinking coke for instance.”

“As long as we can’t measure tablet viewing data we can’t sell those audiences. Advertisers are taking platforms seriously so we can’t afford to lose any viewer to which we are entitled. The question is can measurement keep up with the consumer, who is currently way ahead.”

NBC Universal’s Olympics research also highlighted the growing tablet and mobile use by over 55s for TV content. The 55-64s were the highest demographic for tablets.

Video streams across mobile and tablets had soared from 300,000 in 2008 to 24 million across the 2012 Olympics. One third of this came from the over 50s.

BBC viewing of the Olympics recorded a 91% reach at 52 million viewers and 10 million more than Beijing.