Sofres wins TV contract in Singapore

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.

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