MUMBAI: Kantar, in association with VTION, has launched OTT Audience Measurement Insights for audio streaming platforms at a time when a unified third-party measurement is need of the hour. While the video measurement will come up in Q2, both the companies, on the back of the collaboration, aim to fill the need gap.

“The idea here is that we hope to provide a third party independent measurement, which tells platforms about what the consumers are listening, at what time which platforms, what kind of content is being consumed. We don't have any stake, either of the parties in any of the platform. The idea is that we want to be the currency for the OTT industry to make decisions about content, marketing and communication,” Kantar South Asia Insights Division managing director and chief strategy officer Hemant Mehta said.

Mehta added that VTION’s expertise in technologies is the core strength of the partnership, while Kantar brings in the knowledge of using that data to understand from a media planning or market insights perspective. Despite challenges, both the parties are now confident that what they are measuring and reporting to the market is reliable.

He added that having one standard metric is not possible, it would vary. “What we are giving is our standard variables by which you can evaluate like in any other medium. We've got reach, rating, time spent, share - the four variables which every medium has, we are also releasing those to the industry. And we hope that industry will take a consensus about what should be the measure,” Mehta said.

He also added that the in-depth measurement data will be subscription-based. As shared by him, along with platforms, advertisers are also showing interest in the data. The recent study is based on a robust sample size of 9000+ stretching across top 9 cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad & Lucknow/Kanpur) among male and female of age group of 18+ and across SEC A, B & CDE.