NEWS1 December 2011
US— Rentrak today boasted that it had jumped ahead of rival Nielsen with a new TV metric that can tell advertisers how many viewers were exposed to specific commercials in a national campaign.
The company says its Exact Commercial Ratings Module represents an “advance” on Nielsen’s C3 ratings, which provide a measurement of average viewer numbers for commercial minutes within a programme.
Rentrak senior vice president Evan Goldfarb said: “With Exact Commercial Ratings, every agency and advertiser will have the ability to determine the performance of a specific commercial on their network campaign and be able to plan, buy and place spots much more strategically.”
The company works out viewing figures using set-top box data from 19 million TV sets, whereas Nielsen collects viewing data from a smaller, nationally-representative panel of metered homes.
In recent days Rentrak signed expanded contracts with Schurz Communications and London Broadcasting for the local market TV measurement service, StationView Essentials.
StationView clients will not be offered the Exact Commercial Ratings Module, Rentrak said.
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