From this year Serie A matches are broadcast by DAZN and, in addition to the problems of streaming, there is also the issue related to ratings. In fact, the Auditel is not active on DAZN which, on the other hand, has been a reference point for TV ratings for several decades. DAZN has chosen Nielsen, a private company and not a certification body, for the calculation of the TV ratings. It is therefore not possible to verify the figures provided by the platform. The “problem” also affects other streaming services in addition to the entire advertising world. For the future there could be the debut of a independent and single system for all media.
A single and independent system to calculate the TV ratings of platforms such as DAZN?
The problem has long since been raised by Agcom which issued a resolution to “identify, from a methodological point of view, unique metrics to be used to make consumption data referring to various media comparable”. The proposal of Upa (Associated Advertising Users) and Una (Joint Communications Companies) tries to overcome the problem of TV ratings for services such as DAZN and Netflix.
Everything revolves around the concept of “total audience” with the aim of obtaining homogeneous metrics for all products. In addition to TV, streaming videos and all other audio and text platforms could also be involved in the project. In this way, the data collected could be accurate and able to accurately evaluate the actual follow-up to an event or content.
Could a hybrid system be the solution?
The president of Upa, Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi, underlines how the goal is to arrive at “a transparent and independent system”. The goal could be achieved with a hybrid system that uses census data plus sample panels in order to keep track of user behavior. Further updates on the issue are expected to emerge over the next few weeks.