tracking

Multiplatform music video programmer, Music Choice, said Wednesday that its VOD service, Music Choice On Demand, generated over a billion orders in 2009, making it the number-one VOD network for the year. The company cited data from media measurement and analytics company, Rentrak, which it says confirmed that its service secured the most orders of any free or premium VOD service and surpassed all free VOD services for total unique set-top boxes accessing its content. The company also said that the data showed that the service accumulated more than double the orders of most other VOD music services combined, with nearly three out of every four music-related orders in 2009 being for Music Choice content.

Kyte, a San Francisco-based company that offers a social-enabled broadband and mobile video platform for live and on-demand content (note: it bills its platform as "combin[ing] the real-time, interactive and community building capabilities of the social Web with professional-grade analytics and content management features, enabling businesses and organizations to engage online and mobile audiences and build community around their brand"), on Tuesday launched Kyte Console 2.0.

Here is a round-up of some other interactive TV-related stories we didn't have room for in this issue:

In a posting on a corporate blog last week, Microsoft's general manager of marketing and advertising strategy, Mark Kroese, announced that the company is teaming with the Nielsen Company on a pilot test to measure the effectiveness of in-game advertising. The test is launching with the second season of "1 vs. 100 Live," the avatar-driven interactive TV version of the Endemol-developed "1 vs. 100" game show format, that Microsoft offers on its Xbox Live service. (Note: Like a regular linear-TV game show, "1 vs.

Multiscreen media measurement and research company, Rentrak, announced Tuesday that it has signed a multi-year deal with Spanish-language premium movie channel, Cinelatino, that will see the latter using its OnDemand Essentials VOD measurement service in order to gain more insight into the preferences of its viewers. "The Hispanic population is the largest and fastest-growing demographic group in the US and OnDemand Essentials will provide Cinelatino with key information needed to meet the growing demand for quality Spanish-language content on the on-demand platform," Carol Hinnant, SVP of business development for Rentrak's Advanced Media and Information division, said in a prepared statement.

Interactive TV and advanced advertising technology provider, OpenTV, announced Tuesday that it will open up its TV measurement platform by publishing, later this year, the format of key data points that its software is able to measure on the set-top box. The company says that this open access will allow the developer community, data analysis partners and other service providers to integrate with its measurement solution more easily, and will foster the creation of next-generation set-top box services with enhanced personalization features, such as addressable and interactive advertising and content addressability.

VOD technology provider, Concurrent, on Wednesday launched a cross-services data storage and correlation solution, called Central Data Warehouse (CDW), which it says is designed to offer a 360-degree view of linear, VOD and interactive media consumption across TV, mobile and PC screens. The company bills the CDW as the industry's first centralized data warehouse solution to allow broadband operators to consolidate the collection, storage and correlation of census-level media data from linear broadcast, VOD and online video viewing, facilitating a "secure and seamless exchange of consumption data among media industry stakeholders."

Multiscreen media measurement and research company, Rentrak, announced Tuesday that VOD viewing set a record in July with 655 million transactions, surpassing the previous record--which was set in June--by 11%, and representing a 19% increase over the same month last year. The company--which offers a VOD measurement service called OnDemand Essentials--also said it measured a 15% increase in the number of unique set-top boxes accessing VOD. In addition, the average number of minutes per day spent watching VOD increased, the company said, and the proportion of VOD-enabled set-top boxes accessing on-demand content increased to 47% in July.

Rovi (formerly Macrovision--for more on the company's name change and the repositioning it heralds, see the interview with Rovi chief evangelist, Richard Bullwinkle, that was published on itvt.com, July 16th) announced Wednesday that it is partnering with TNS Media Research to develop advanced TV and set-top box measurement solutions.

Multiscreen media measurement and research company, Rentrak, reported Wednesday that June was the most-viewed month for VOD in the US so far this year, seeing over 589 million transactions (note: Rentrak defines transactions as a "combination of views and orders as reported by [its] MSO partners")--which the company claims is a record. During that month, there was an average of 16.5 minutes of on-demand viewing per day per active unique set-top box, the company says, which represents a 1.5-minute-per-set-top box viewing increase when compared to May. Free-on-demand children's programming saw a 7% increase in transactions over May and also enjoyed its strongest month of the year, according to Rentrak, with over 106 million transactions.

Multiplatform music programmer, Music Choice, said Tuesday that it will use Nielsen's VOD audience measurement service. Music Choice is the third company to announce that it will use the service, and is the first ad-supported VOD platform to do so: the service's other clients are the premium programming providers, HBO and Showtime.

DVR vendor/service provider, TiVo, announced Tuesday that it is partnering with Quantcast, a company that provides a Web-audience measurement service focused on enabling addressable advertising, to offer advertisers and media companies a comprehensive cross-platform audience-analysis solution that will evaluate the correlation between TV viewership and online activity.

DVR vendor/service provider, TiVo, announced Thursday that it has signed a deal with the National Basketball Association (NBA) that sees the latter using TiVo's interactive TV advertising solutions to promote the NBA finals.

At the NAB show in Las Vegas Monday, DVR vendor/service provider, TiVo--in what appears to be an attempt to challenge Nielsen's dominance in the local ratings space--announced StopWatch Local Markets, a version of the company's StopWatch audience ratings service that provides anonymous, second-by-second, year-round ratings data for programming and commercials in local US television markets (note: StopWatch collects its research data from TiVo boxes; TiVo recently announced that it would expand the size of the service's sample from 100,000 to 300,000 boxes--see [itvt] Issue 8.23 Part 2A).

--Signs VOD Deals with Gravitas Ventures, Eurocinema
--Offers Multiscreen ITV App for US Elections
--Launches New DVR Products
--Signs Audience Measurement Deal with Rentrak