Cross-platform Rating: Expectations and Lessons Learned of Thai Digital TV

Abstract

Television has reached yet another tipping point in its industry evolution. Driven by the dynamic evolution of internet technology, the transformation provoked by the technological convergence between television broadcast and internet broadband allows for a boundary between traditional, linear television offerings and internet-based online video. One important consideration in this will be the role that traditional broadcasters will play when confronted with new competitors from outside the television industry. When television services changed their business models, TV providers needed a tool for collecting and analyzing data to determine the size and composition of television audiences across platforms. In Thailand, the Association of Digital Television Broadcasting (ADTEB), in collaboration with Nielsen (Thailand), launched the new cross-platform rating system to help establish a better understanding of media consumption trends by combining both online and offline media under one standard rating system with funded support from the telecommunications and broadcasting regulator. The aims of this article were to introduce improvements to the rating survey, methodologies, problems, and lessons that the stakeholders have learned, which the author has collected from work experiences related to the transition process and from being involved in the use of cross-platform rating at an early stage. Incorporating evidence, it was found that the new TV audience ratings purely take the advertisement share and economic interests into account. Under the globalization, this has not yet led to an improvement in content quality and does not directly affect Thai content competition in global markets.