Dive Brief:

• ComScore is launching its comScore OTT Intelligence syndicated service to measure viewer behavior on over-the-top (OTT) devices, per a company press release.
• The service taps comScore’s Total Home Panel to track views across the range of OTT devices including streaming boxes and sticks, gaming consoles and smart TVs. Measurements offered include household reach, audience size and demographics, along with a variety of usage metrics, and the data can be segmented by cord-cutting and cord-never homes and those with a cable or satellite subscription.
• “With very limited insight into viewing behavior across providers, the OTT market has largely been a black box,” said Mike Rich, comScore vice president of emerging products, in the press release. “As more TV viewers look beyond traditional content sources, it’s more important than ever for networks, content producers, device manufacturers and others in the ecosystem to understand this growing segment of cross-platform viewing.”

Dive Insight:

While comScore is late to the game in offering OTT measurement, it may be trying to provide a more complete picture of viewing habits than its competitors. The main challenge in measuring OTT viewership is the diverse devices used to watch Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and other streaming video content. ComScore’s solution to that problem is its Total Home Panel which covers 12,500 households and 150,000 active devices monthly.

The growing number of measurement options for OTT viewing points to how significant this segment of the programming market has become and the need for advertisers to better understand the behaviors of these viewers. A new report from IAB shows a 56% jump in the number of consumers owning a streaming-enabled TV in the past two years and that 44% of streaming viewers find ads during digital programming less intrusive. 

Reporting from MediaPost pointed out that two years ago Nielsen and Roku partnered to measure OTT views, and last year Nielsen released it Digital Content Ratings service that covers a range of digital content, such as video and text, that includes OTT platforms.

In January, IPG Mediabrands’ Magna also partnered with Roku to give IPG clients access to targeting, programmatic workflows, interactivity, and audience measurement on Roku’s over-the-top video audience. And last month Roku announced it was the first OTT platform to offer demographic guarantees based on Nielsen Digital Ad Rating.