PEM D

Digital Audience Measurement in
the Czech Republic

How is TV audience on the Internet measured?

The audience of video content on the Internet is measured in the Czech Republic within the so-called PEM D - digital part of the Project of Crossplatform Electronic Audience and Content Consumption Measurement (PCEM) in the Czech Republic. As in the case of traditional peoplemeter measurement, the project owner is the Association of Television Organisations (ATO). The video content measurement mainly includes video services of TV broadcasters so that the resulting data can be subsequently combined with the peoplemeter data (PEM TV).

Unlike the peoplemeter part, where the measurement is carried out on a selected representative sample of cooperating households that have peoplemeters installed, the Internet audience measurement provides so-called census data, i.e. data for the entire population (e.g. audience of a live broadcast on a computer, a programme from the TV archive on a tablet, etc.). Thus, every visitor who watches any video content on the measured website is counted.

Measurement directly on websites and apps

No active cooperation is required from the Internet audience: the census is automatic and anonymous, similar to measuring website traffic. It is implemented on websites and apps of the participating media (e.g. iVysílání ČT, iPrima, TN.cz, etc.) and measures audience on a computer, tablet, mobile phone and via HbbTV on a smart TV (via the "red button").

What does the technical solution look like?

The principle is similar to that of tools that measure website traffic, for example. Even for the Internet audience measurement, the video players of the participating broadcasters (in browsers and apps) are equipped with so-called measurement codes. These count each time a video is played by a user, identify which video it was, when and on what type of device it was viewed, measure the time spent watching it, etc. This information is then processed into overall audience results.

Who provides the technical solution?

The measurement codes and the entire technical solution for data collection and processing are provided by the company Nielsen, which also uses this type of measurement technology on the Internet in many other countries around the world.

What about protection of privacy?

The digital tracking technology strictly respects Czech and European legislation on the protection of personal data, including the GDPR directive and industry codes of ethics. All measurement is anonymous and reflects user-granted consents in the privacy settings of individual websites or broadcaster apps.

What does the data say?

The resulting data provides information on how many times each individual show (e.g. a specific episode of a series) was streamed live online, how many times from the archive (and on which day), how much time viewers spent watching it and on which device or platform (computer, mobile, tablet, smart TV/web, mobile app, HbbTV). Using a special statistical model (similar to the one used e.g. in the USA), it is then possible to estimate the viewership e.g. in different age groups, between men and women, etc.

Example of results

Audience share by TV group ("TTS Share" - Total Time Spent)

The following graph shows that in 2021, viewers devoted the most time to online content from TV groups ČT* (iVysílání + HbbTV), FTV Prima* (iPrima + HbbTV) and Nova* (Nova.cz + HbbTV).

Annual development of audience share ("TTS") by device

The graph below illustrates how the shares of online viewing by device - PC, mobile, tablet and Connected TV (CTV) or internet-connected TV - looked during 2021. It shows that viewers watch TV content on the Internet most often on computers.

Can the results be combined with the peoplemeter data?

Yes, data subscribers have this option. Thanks to statistical processing, it is possible, for example, to easily analyse for each programme how many viewers watched it live on TV, how many watched it later on TV (timeshift), how many watched it live on the Internet and how many watched it later on the Internet (i.e. from the archive). For internet viewership, indicators comparable to TV viewership (Rating) are used.

Where to next?