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A User’s guide to OzTAM’s new video ratings

Move over Overnights and Timeshifted ratings, the VPM is here.

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Australian TV ratings will take a new turn tomorrow when OzTAM releases its very first Video Player Measurement (VPM) Report -Australia’s first official figures for viewing of internet-delivered TV content.

To help you understand it all here’s what you need to know….

The data is complementary to the current broadcast and Timeshifted ratings, and is not to be added together as a total.

At this stage the numbers, which cover Seven, Nine, TEN, ABC, SBS and Foxtel, are for Catch-Up viewing only -not Live streaming. Viewing devices include tablets, smartphones, smart TVs, games consoles and PCs / laptops.

The data will be for viewing over the last 7 days (midnight-midnight Sydney time). These will be published as “rolling reports” ie Sunday 7-Saturday 13 Feb, then Monday 8 – Sunday 14 Feb. etc.

Each programme will have a ‘VPM Rating’: the average number of devices that have played the content across a program’s duration. But while TV ratings measure people, VPM ratings measure devices and OzTAM does not yet know how many people are viewing these. The VPM is also a national figure, not 5 city metro.

A VPM (Video Player Measurement) Rating is the total minutes of a program played across all devices divided by the content length and rounded to the nearest thousand. If a 30 minute show has 600,000 minutes of content played then 600,000 ÷ 30 = 20,000 VPM rating.

A program must be at least 15 minutes in duration to be included in the VPM Report top programs. However, every minute of catch up play counts towards overall video play activity (‘total catch up minutes’) in the VPM Report.

OzTAM will publish its VPM on its website 9am weekdays here.

This will include:

  • Top 10 network programs (by episode)
  • Top 5 programs for each broadcaster (by episode)

Separate to the public reports, participating broadcasters are receiving their own data.

OzTAM’s VPM reporting has been more than two years in development.

“As is the case with time-shifted viewing, the most-watched catch up programs are often those with the biggest broadcast audiences, while others – notably dramas – can attract a significant portion of their total audience from catch up viewing,” says OzTAM CEO Doug Peiffer.

“We thank our broadcaster partners for their continued cooperation as we work towards including live streaming in VPM Reports, further detail on ‘long tail’ viewing and – in 2017 – demographics in the VPM service.”

A note about privacy
OzTAM only knows that a device is playing content from a participating broadcaster’s video player service. At no point does OzTAM monitor anything other than when the device is accessing a network app or browser-based video server. OzTAM is not able to identify the user of the device.

9 Responses

  1. I guess the point that comes to mind is how the shift in viewer preferences are going to influence broadcasters and especially their advertising revenue profits in the future. The one thing not yet fully adopted with catch up TV is binge viewing which is available on Netflix for example. If as I foresee FTA is going to have to adapt to new tech or become redundant, FTA commercial channels will need to offer whole series and not just select episodes.

  2. I wonder if that will see a lift in ABC numbers? ABC iview is very popular. I watched two shows via iview in the last week. Being a regional viewer it will be nice to ‘feel’ included. I also watched Wanted via Plus7 whose VPS has improved in recent times. It seems to be my preferred way to watch dramas. Thanks for explaining David.

  3. Yes it is complex, which is why it was worth running some explanatory notes ahead of the first numbers. I expect it to make more sense once we can see actual numbers. Edit: It isn’t drawn via representative households. It’s a full national playout.

    1. Yes its the same as the Oztam system but keyed to a device so if you get 2 viewings worth of minutes you won’t know if two people watched it, one person watched it twice or 4 people watched half of it.

      It will provide standard numbers for catch-ups, and along with the consolidated numbers provide a figure for how many people were interested in watch a show in a week, not just before 2am when it aired. A more accurate number than the connection based number that networks have been banding about to pretend there hasn’t been any decline in veiwers.

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