Nielsen, under a multiyear deal with WPP's Kantar Media, will incorporate set-top box from about 100,000 DirecTV households into local TV ratings.
Nielsen said it has developed a proprietary, hybrid methodology for the U.S. market that combines the research firm's National People Meter panel data with set-top box and other sources of data for markets that currently rely on diary-based measurement.
In a test last summer, Nielsen interpolated set-top data from Charter Communications in three markets into local TV ratings (for St. Louis, Greenville, S.C., and Reno, Nev.). According to Nielsen, the set-top data eliminated between 50% and 90% of the variability for ratings in a diary market.
Kantar Media's DirectView service provides live and time-shifted information -- with second-by-second commercial ratings -- from 100,000 national DirecTV households projectable to 17 million households.
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