Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) has been awarded the contract for
television audience measurement in Singapore by The Media Corporation of
Singapore.
TNS - a shareholder of CVSC-Sofres-Media (CSM) in China - won the
business after beating out incumbent, ACNielsen, and strong
international competition in the form of AGB Italia.
TNS' contract will run for five years starting from January 2001, with
the company assigned to measure television viewing habits among 750
households in the Lion City.
The company won the contract after demonstrating that it could
effectively cover both digital as well as analog viewing and out-of-home
viewing.
"Having the ability to monitor what programmes were being viewed and
when through PeopleMeters and also the ability to measure viewership
when viewers are out of home, that is in hotels or restaurants or pubs
through Portable PeopleMeters built into a wristwatch made the
difference," a TNS spokesperson told MEDIA.
TNS executive director Mike Kirkham described Singapore as "important"
to the group's overall regional ambitions and said the win "strengthens
the group's international presence in television audience
measurement".
The contract, however, deals a major blow to ACNielsen, which has been
at the forefront of PeopleMeter technology and television measurement in
Asia-Pacific - not just in Singapore - over the past five years.
It is also the latest set-back for ACNielsen, which has come under
strong competitive pressure from CSM - TNS' joint venture arm in China -
over the past year.
CSM has challenged ACNielsen's dominance of the China television viewing
market by recently launching a PeopleMeter monitoring service in
Shanghai.
This is on top of existing services that were also recently rolled out
in Guangzhou and Beijing.
Although ACNielsen's coverage in China is still more extensive, CSM has
begun to erode its rival's marketshare.
Mr Kirkham said of the China drive: "We are fast extending our metred
service nationwide in China to serve the burgeoning Chinese media
industry."
TNS is also rolling out 2,700 PeopleMeter panels in Taiwan, three times
more than the number ACNielsen has in place.
Daily ratings reports will be available from the second quarter of next
year.
It is believed that television media owners in Taiwan are pushing for
the TNS ratings because ACNielsen's set-up of 1,000 PeopleMeter panels
is deemed to be insufficient.
