- Mike Shields

NEW YORK TiVo has inked a partnership with the upstart Web analytics firm Quantcast to begin offering advertisers audience data that blends TV viewing and Web surfing.

The promise of the TiVo/Quantcast pact is to provide buyers with a means to evaluate cross-media campaigns from a single source. Typically, evaluating such campaigns requires using disparate, non-compatible data sources -- making it difficult to calculate measures such as total unduplicated reach.

"Most brands invest in both Internet and television advertising, and often the campaigns are designed to reinforce each other from a creative standpoint, but the audiences of these advertising impressions have been measured separately and independently," said Todd Juenger, vp and general manager, TiVo audience research and measurement.

That goal of comprehensive, cross-platform measurement is still a ways away, given the limitations of TiVo's install base and Quantcast's current coverage. But to start, the companies said they have a sample of 35,000 households from which to draw data-leveraging TiVo's Power Watch ratings service, which boasts of second-by-second program and commercial ratings, along with user data from the 10 million Web sites Quantcast claims to monitor.

Beside offering advertisers insight into just how many people are being reached by particular TV and Web campaigns, the new service -- which will roll out sometime this summer -- also should help shed light on how campaigns running on both media work together, said officials.

For example, a brand would theoretically be able to track whether people who view a particular TV spot elect to visit the company's Web site. Media companies can also use the service to see how their different content distribution outlets complement each other.


Nielsen Business Media