The ratings process
OzTAM's TAM (TV ratings) service is based on the actual viewing behaviour of 12,000+ individuals, 24/7/365, in homes across Australia’s mainland metropolitan markets and supplies daily respondent-level TV set viewing data for the Virtual Australia ('VOZ') Total TV service.
OzTAM’s research service provider, Nielsen TAM, collects and produces the broadcast TV viewing data on OzTAM’s behalf.
Once a household has been recruited onto the panel, all television sets in that home - whether connected to the internet or not - are monitored by a sophisticated metering system that captures viewing to all broadcast television channels on all TV sets in that home.
The meters record and store all information about viewing including:
- who is watching
- the time, duration and date
- whether each TV is on or off
- the television audio signal
All household residents, and any guests, register their presence using a remote control. The panel members do not need to do anything else for OzTAM to capture their viewing.
Every night, Nielsen collects the household's viewing data automatically from the meters in a process known as 'polling'.
A sophisticated ‘content matching’ process matches the audio captured from the panel homes to a reference library of all available TV broadcast channels within each market is used to measure viewing to individual channels, whether the viewing is Live (i.e., as the program actually went to air) As Live (paused or recorded programming played back before 2am on the same day of the original broadcast) and Time Shift to 7 (recorded broadcast content played back through the TV set after the same Research Day and within seven days of the original broadcast). Since April 2016, OzTAM has also captured Consolidated 28 viewing through the TV set up to 28 days after the broadcast first went to air.
Nielsen's production system collates, processes, analyses, validates and weights the viewing data.
Once the production processes are completed, the television program schedules provided by the TV networks are integrated with the viewing data. All data undergoes rigorous quality control procedures.
OzTAM’s TAM databases were produced, and reporting was delivered, on a ‘What Watched’ basis. That means viewing, whenever it takes place during the seven days, and up to 28 days, following original broadcast (such as time-shifted a few days later), is attributed back to the time that the program first went to air. In other words, viewing is consolidated to the broadcast TV event.
More on Timeshift viewing.
See this one-page PDF on The Ratings Process for an illustration.
More about the OzTAM Panel.
Please note OzTAM uses a different methodology to capture viewing of internet-delivered TV content ('BVOD'). Please see the Video Player Measurement section for details.
OzTAM TV ratings and its BVOD measurement service are key components of Australia's new integrated all-screen, cross-platform Total TV database, Virtual Australia ('VOZ').
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