The Dutch audience measurement organisation SKO has started a collaboration with cablers Ziggo and UPC to measure TV watching via live streams on devices other than a TV set.
The research into second screen watching including iPads is a first in the world for the Netherlands. According to a report in Ad Age, US cabler Comcast will launch a similar research this summer in cooperation with Nielsen.
For some time cable operator Ziggo and IPTV provider KPN offer customers the ability to stream live TV to PC, smartphone or tablet. UPC will introduce service at a later stage when it launched the eagerly awaited Horizon set-top box.
In the current TV viewing measurement of SKO this kind of viewing is not yet integrated. UPC and Ziggo have now joined SKO to supply data of this kind of live viewing, and KPN has also expressed its intention to join the research.
The cooperation takes the form of a project: Project Live Streams Measurement (LSM). The operators will supply the viewing data in terms of total viewing. In order to protect privacy no details will be supplied of which household watches what programme.
In a statement, Bas de Vos, managing director SKO said: “We are delighted with this unique collaboration. It makes the first steps possible into the investigation of other, additional sources of viewing data. This is an extremely complex project, which should yield knowledge about new forms of viewing behaviour, but also on new data sources.”
