Mediapulse wants to be the world leader with TV measurement

The Mediapulse Group closed its fourth financial year (2011) with sales of 19.4 million Swiss francs, 2 percent more than the previous year. This is according to the figures presented in Bern on Tuesday. The additional revenue was possible thanks to new customers in the TV sector, such as Ringier, which has been marketing the TV advertising window of French broadcaster TF1 since 2011. Profit also increased by 4 percent to 644'000 francs, thanks in part to a profit share of 125'000 francs from the 45 percent stake in internet research company NET-Metrix.  

Almost 10 million Swiss francs for panel investments

The Mediapulse Group, which is setting up a new TV measurement panel with the British company Kantar Media as of January 1, 2013, has around CHF 10 million available for panel investments (including in the radio measurement panel) - thanks to federal contributions that could be set aside in the first three years of operation (CHF 1.7 million) and those that have been pledged for 2011 - 2013 and, according to Mediapulse CEO Manuel Dähler, can be partly drawn in advance. Thanks to this money, Mediapulse can make the investments in the new panel without external financing. In return, Telecontrol's existing TV measurement equipment will be written off at the end of 2012.  

Write-offs because of PIN data?

The annual report also shows that the cost of evaluating a new planning and accounting software called EvoAd, which took several years, amounted to around 700,000 Swiss francs. However, this amount does not include the personnel expenses that were necessary for this. EvoAd was originally intended to replace the previous planning and booking tools and enable planning with PIN data, but it was then rejected - in a slimmed-down version - by the market participants (marketers and media agencies). That's why the two TV marketers Publisuisse and Goldbach Group started a new evaluation, in which EvoAd is back in the running. The outcome of this will determine, among other things, whether and how much Mediapulse will have to write off the amount mentioned.  

Web radio: Measurement postponed

Dähler also announced some "bad news": The measurement of web radio usage cannot start this summer as announced, but has to be postponed to next year. The preparatory work and tests took longer than planned, he said. The new TV panel, on the other hand, seems to be well on its way. Already, Kantar Media has set up a branch in Switzerland and moved into office space at Bahnhofstr. 4 in Gümligen. The Dane Keld Nielsen, Global Business Development Director of Kantar Media, and the Israeli Eitan Kassif, as Regional Director for the time being also boss in Switzerland (teaser picture), were then also present at the Mediapulse press conference and briefly introduced the company: Kantar Media is part of the WPP Group, one of the world's largest media and communications companies, headquartered in London. Kantar is active in media and consumer research in around 40 countries. The Swiss office will comprise around 30 people, and the managing director is to be announced soon.  

At the top of the world with a new TV panel

The new TV panel is currently being set up and is expected to equip 1870 households with the Kantar 500 Series meter by the end of 2012, almost the same number as today (1918 households). The measurement is based - similar to radio measurement - on the principle of audio matching. In this way, not only live usage can be measured, as is the case today, but now also time-delayed usage - whether on the TV set, on the PC or on a mobile device - for up to seven days after the initial broadcast, as Isabel Wenger, Head of Research at Mediapulse, pointed out. The new Mediapulse panel will thus be one of the first country panels in the world to also include web TV usage and will therefore "move up to the top of the world in TV research". A paradigm shift is thus taking place in TV measurement: "The focus on the TV set is giving way to a focus on the content," Wenger said.

Markus Knöpfli