ESPN, Aided by Arbitron and comScore, to Follow the Audience Wherever It Goes

By TANZINA VEGA

With more people using Twitter while they watch television, surfing the Web while they listen to the radio, or toggling between the content on their tablets and smartphones, advertisers and media companies are struggling to keep track of the eyeballs they covet.

On Monday, a new joint venture between Arbitron, the radio ratings giant, comScore, the digital media research company, and ESPN will be announced that will try to measure the media consumption patterns of consumers across five platforms: radio, television, mobile phones, tablets and desktop computers. ESPN will be the first media company to use the service and collaborate with the two companies.

“The industry has been struggling with cross media,” said Manish Bhatia, the executive vice president for new product innovation at Arbitron “Any conference you go to there is a discussion around cross-media management.”

Media companies and advertisers are trying to answer questions such as whether the ads and content are reaching the right people, how much of the audience is duplicated and which platforms are most effective, Mr. Bhatia said.

ComScore will provide data from its opt-in panels that track consumer use of smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. The company will also provide information about user activity on the Web sites it tracks for publishers and from set-top television boxes. Arbitron will provide radio listening data from the use of its opt-in Portable People Meter technology, which covers 70,000 people in the United States.

ComScore's desktop panel includes one million people and it has set-top boxes in several million homes, according to Andrew Lipsman, a company spokesman. Mr. Lipsman said the mobile and tablet panels were “still in development.”

Representatives from comScore and Arbitron said the goal was to produce results that are “nationally p rojectable” and not specific to the individual. For example, the data could measure how many people are watching television while using their tablets, or determine what devices people are using when following a sporting event.

Joan FitzGerald, the vice president for television sales and business development at comScore, said the results would help advertisers and media companies better understand what time of day is ideal to reach certain parts of the audience, and, more generally, how best to combine different types of media.

“Really basic questions about cross-platform use are not answered today,” Ms. FitzGerald said, giving as an example, “How many more people can I reach by combining PC and mobile?”

Merging all of these sets of data will allow ESPN to see both how its own content performs and how users consume media more generally, said Artie Bulgrin, the senior vice president for research and analytics at ESPN. That information will help ES PN and the advertisers and agencies it works with. “We have to get the content measurement right,” Mr. Bulgrin said. “It's critical from a planning perspective from our clients.”

The companies will disclose more details on the new venture at Advertising Week, which will be held in New York City in October.

Tanzina Vega writes about advertising and digital media. Follow @tanzinavega on Twitter.