LONDON, October 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --  Astro will report subscribers' viewing behaviour across the operator's channel base.

Astro, Malaysia's leading integrated consumer media group that provides Pay TV and radio services, has signed an agreement with Kantar Media to design, deploy and manage a proprietary audience measurement service.  

This service, the first of its kind in Malaysia, will use Kantar Media's return path data (RPD) research techniques to collect data from its subscribers' set top boxes, measure and then provide analysis of standard definition, high definition, time-shifted, video-on-demand and interactive television viewing. In addition Astro will gather detailed information on advertising spots across the entire TV operator's subscriber viewing base.

"We are pleased to be partnering with Kantar Media to offer significant improvements to TV viewing measurements," commented Henry Tan, Chief Operating Officer at Astro. "The DTAM system will deliver robust and accurate insights into customer behaviour that will help us plan and develop our content more effectively. Advertisers and clients will also benefit from the data-rich service, which will help them develop effective, targeted campaigns to the right Malaysian households, and as such, maximise results from their advertising investments."

This latest win reinforces Kantar Media's presence in Asia. The company already has audience measurement services in Singapore, the Philippines, Mainland China, Vietnam and Hong Kong and has recently secured services in Mongolia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Earlier this year Kantar Media announced its expanded partnership with Twitter on the launch of new social TV measurement tools to include parts of south-east Asia.

Nick Burfitt, Global Director at Kantar Media Audiences, commented, "We are delighted to be partnering with Astro to build and manage this new service. Our experience working with Pay TV operators worldwide over the last decade to deploy services utilising our best-in-class return path data technology will ensure that advertisers, agencies and content producers gain real and useful insights into the viewing habits of Astro's subscribers."

The new service will be built on two panels. The first comprises of data sourced from 80,000 IPTV/set top boxes in Malaysian homes to measure the viewing habits of urban, affluent consumers. The second, a recruited panel of 4,000 homes, will represent viewers in Astro's subscriber viewing base and will include homes sourced from Kantar Worldpanel's existing Malaysia's household FMCG panel. It will combine real-time viewing with data on what people purchase into a single source tool for accurate targeting and ROI measurement.  

Kantar Media will work with Astro and Kantar Worldpanel to begin to deploy the service in 2015.

http://www.kantarmedia-audiences.com

Source: Kantar Media