The Media Rating Council has granted initial accreditation to a nationally projectable enumeration examination of consumer behavior in TV and digital media conducted by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF).
With MRC accreditation, the ARF DASH TV Universe Study has been verified as compliant with the council’s minimum standards for media rating research.
The ARF report provides comprehensive estimates of consumer television footprints across connections, services and devices.
“Universe estimates are industry infrastructure, essential for calibrating viewership data and projecting audiences. DASH provides the industry with an unbiased enumeration standard,” says George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director of the MRC. “We believe this is an important foundational data set for the industry and appreciate the interest and cooperation of ARF DASH in seeking MRC accreditation to provide independent assessment of their compliance with our Standards.”
Of importance to note, Ivie adds, is that data are “very meaningful as it relates to determining behaviors and consumption patterns across media as well as providing valuable insights into viewership trends, device usage and streaming services. The MRC expects that the industry will benefit from having an independent universe estimates provider like DASH and those benefits would apply to television, digital, out of home and other media.”
For ARF President/CEO Scott McDonald, “The media industry has long needed an independent, rigorous and cost-efficient standard for universe estimation. That’s a gap the ARF was uniquely positioned to fill. We owe a great debt to our research partners at NORC and to our licensees across the industry for their technical and financial support of DASH. We thank the MRC and its auditors for their guidance throughout the accreditation process.”
DASH records how U.S. households connect to and consume TV, use video-capable digital devices, and interact with and share streaming media and ecommerce accounts. It is a syndicated study fielded in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago, a premier polling firm, and supported by measurement experts at DASH licensees.
The ARF DASH TV Universe Study is designed to paint a comprehensive picture of the U.S. consumer television landscape. DASH records, in granular detail, how consumers connect to and consume TV across platforms, devices and services. Subscribers use DASH to calibrate viewership data, project audiences, sharpen demographics, assess strategy and tell better sales stories, among other applications.
DASH was launched in 2021 and employs a national probability sample to produce reliable projections in total U.S. context. DASH also enables definition and profiling of TV consumers on hundreds of demographic and usage characteristics.
“Fielded annually in two waves, DASH produces timely, respondent-level data that supports rigorous tracking of key measures and analysis of consumer switching,” the ARF notes. “The survey maintains a reliable core for trending but is updated each wave to reflect the dynamics of the market and address the data needs of licensees. Modules in DASH delve deeply into hot topics, including ad-supported streaming, out-of-home viewing and retail media networks.”
The ARF releases two, rolling 12-month DASH data sets a year.
Through a collaboration with Experian, DASH-defined audience segments are available on a CPM basis on many ad platforms, allowing advertisers to align campaigns easily with consumers’ media usage habits. DASH data can be mapped to any ID graph to enable licensees to produce custom ad targets.
