Audience measurement has traditionally relied on small, representative panels such as those maintained by Nielsen, Kantar Media, AGF Videoforschung and BARB. While these have offered consistent benchmarks for decades, the explosion of viewing options across digital, time-shifted, and connected platforms has outgrown the limitations of small-sample data.

The industry is shifting toward a more comprehensive approach that blends traditional panels with actual data from millions of connected devices – like Smart TVs, set-top boxes, and HbbTV platforms. The result is a more detailed view of what people are watching, when, and on which device – but not without some challenges.

Why traditional panels are losing ground

Traditional panels have been useful, offering things like solid demographic insights (age, gender, household makeup) and a long history of trust. They’ve given broadcasters a standard ‘currency’ to sell ad space and provided advertisers with a verified audience.

Panel-based measurement systems are statistically solid, but their small scale can be a problem. Many shows – especially niche or regional ones – might not get recorded at all if none of the panel households were watching. Nielsen, for instance, found that in just one quarter, over 8,000 programs showed ‘zero ratings’. Not because no one watched, but because the panel missed them.

In a media landscape that values speed, panel systems fall short, taking days to report viewership data, especially for time-shifted content. To add to that, traditional people meters often miss second-by-second behavior and may only track when a person starts or stops watching, or give average-minute data.

Traditional panels have a difficult time accurately measuring mobile and OTT streaming, capturing out-of-home viewing (such as in public transit or coffee shops), or accounting for shared account usage (such as a whole family watching under one Netflix profile). These blind spots are reflected in the data.

While panels still play a core role – especially in modeling who’s watching – they’re now being supplemented (or even competed with) by device-level data and hybrid methods that introduce more speed, scale, and precision.

It’s not the end of panels: it’s the evolution into one piece of a much broader measurement ecosystem.

How big data enhances the picture

To close the gaps in traditional measurement, audience measurement providers have started integrating “big data” from connected devices. These sources include:

  • Return-path data (RPD) from set-top boxes
  • Automatic content recognition (ACR) from smart TVs
  • HbbTV platforms, which enable hybrid data collection from both broadcast and broadband environments

By tapping into these data streams, providers can build a more complete, granular, and real-time view of viewer behavior.

For example, Nielsen now uses data from over 30 million devices in the U.S. to supplement their panel, leading to more accurate readings—especially for smaller or time-shifted audiences.

The same trend is seen on a number of markets where the old TV audience measurement firms have started measuring both linear and FAST channel streaming consumption, as well as VOD viewing by broadcasters. This has prompted them to introduce total reporting on all viewed video on all platforms, or Total Video. It used to be that TV meant broadcast or cable. Now it’s video people view “all the time”: on TVs, phones, tablets, laptops, Live, on-demand, or time-shifted, On broadcast, YouTube, Netflix, TikTok, Disney+, etc., in-house, out-of-home, or on the move.

Traditional measurement systems couldn’t capture this full picture. Advertisers, content creators, and broadcasters need comparable, consolidated, and transparent data to understand audience behavior in this fragmented landscape.

Real life examples are Nielsen One, Kantar CrossMedia or Médiamétrie.

Real-world examples show that audience measurement is changing

In Turkey, the broadcaster ATV adopted an HbbTV-based audience measurement system. It allowed them to collect anonymized viewing data from over 2 million connected Smart TVs through interactive apps, enhanced guides, and catch-up services. This gave the channel deeper insight into how viewers consumed content, without relying solely on estimates.

Austria also offers a compelling case. In September 2024, AGTT (Austria’s TV measurement body) launched Teletest 2.0, which combines its traditional panel data with information from over 1.1 million HbbTV-connected devices. This hybrid model enhances reliability, reduces volatility in small target groups, and better represents niche channels. Time-shifted viewing data is now available as soon as the next day. It’s a strong step toward scalable and stable audience measurement that matches today’s complex viewing environment.

Persidera, Italy’s leading independent digital terrestrial network operator, has also expanded its service offerings to include advanced audience measurement solutions for broadcasters. The accurate and real-time audience measurement allows broadcasters to gain immediate insights into viewer behavior without the delays associated with traditional panel-based metrics. The data is gathered from over half a million daily active devices.

User consent on smart TVs: a critical gatekeeper

A significant element when collecting data from Smart TVs is user consent. Due to privacy concerns and regulations like GDPR and other similar frameworks, manufacturers and content providers must obtain explicit permission from users before collecting and sharing their viewing data. Consent is usually obtained through on-screen prompts during TV setup or app installations. For HbbTV platforms, a consent banner is displayed to the users as soon as they enter a channel.

Although individual opt-in rates differ based on a variety of factors, overall trends indicate that American consumers exhibit higher rates of consent for Smart TV data collection than their European peers. The distinction is primarily governed by local privacy legislation and data privacy attitudes in society. Additionally, the openness and character of the consent mechanism employed by different Smart TV makers significantly affect user opt-in rates.

Some brands have faced criticism for less transparent consent processes, burying ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) opt-ins deep in long terms and conditions so that it becomes hard for users to make an informed decision.

It’s important to mention that these rates have a direct impact on usable data volume for measurement systems. Even when millions of devices are deployed, only a subset of them actually report because of consent constraints.

Challenges in scaling real-time audience measurement

As connected device data becomes central to audience measurement, it brings significant challenges. Measuring millions of devices means collecting, processing, and storing vast volumes of second-by-second data. A single Smart TV might send tuning data every few seconds – multiply that by 10+ million devices, and you’re dealing with petabytes of data each month. This demands highly scalable cloud infrastructure, real-time data processing pipelines (such as Apache Kafka, Spark, etc.), and robust data governance.

Device and platform fragmentation makes it difficult to ensure consistent data collection across all these devices. APIs differ, firmware updates break things, and some platforms (like Apple TV or Netflix) may not allow third-party measurement at all.

For high quality data, identity resolution and deduplication is needed. One person might start watching on a Smart TV in the living room, then switch to their phone in bed. How do you know it’s the same person? And how do you avoid counting them twice?

In many cases device-level data doesn’t reveal who is watching. Panels are still worth it in such cases. On horizontal markets this may be more of an issue than on vertical platforms where you most likely have access to the subscriber data.

All technical challenges can surely be overcome, but building a robust, scalable, privacy-compliant measurement system is expensive. Smaller broadcasters or markets may not be able to afford these capabilities unless they partner with vendors or benefit from national-level solutions. In most cases it is still cheaper than building and running an audience panel with custom hardware.

The bottom line then becomes the quality and trustworthiness of audience data. How can we ensure that it’s valid, correct and reliable? This is where national panels may still hold strong value: to serve as a true currency for advertising, audience data needs to be validated.

The shift is happening, and it will benefit everyone

The shift to real-audience measurement fueled by connected devices is not just a technical change – it’s a cultural one. Advertisers and broadcasters can now gain insight into actual viewership at a level of granularity that is beyond estimates based on small panels. But to realize the full potential of this change, they must balance scale of data with ethical issues around consent and privacy.

As Smart TV and HbbTV adoption continues to grow, the marriage of panel-based and device-based measurement will likely be the industry standard, providing the best of both accuracy and reach.

In today’s digital age, where attention spans are shorter than ever, businesses are constantly seeking innovative ways to captivate their audience and drive conversions. Video content has proven its merit in capturing viewers and hooking them into action. From product demonstrations to brand storytelling, videos have emerged as a quintessential element in enhancing user engagement and boosting conversion rates on websites. Let’s delve into the reasons why video is a driving force behind online conversions. 

1

SEO Benefits

Video content can boost your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Search engines like Google prioritize websites that offer diverse and engaging content, including videos. By optimizing your videos with relevant keywords, titles, and descriptions, you can improve your website’s visibility in search results and attract more organic traffic. Additionally, videos often result in longer dwell times and lower bounce rates, signaling to search algorithms that your website offers valuable content worth promoting. More visitors mean more conversions.

2

Higher Intent

Video content tends to create longer engagement on websites as it resonates with audiences, making them more likely to stay on your website and take action. They may be researching, comparing options, or seeking in-depth information to make informed decisions. These users exhibit higher purchase intent compared to those who quickly bounce off your site, making them prime targets for conversion. Longer engagement basically provides more opportunities for you to engage with your audience and guide them through the conversion funnel. Visitors who spend more time on your website are more likely to convert.

3

Building Trust and Credibility

Establishing trust is crucial; we tend to buy from people we trust. Videos have a unique ability to evoke emotions and forge connections with viewers. Video content humanizes your brand by putting a face and voice to your message, fostering a sense of authenticity and transparency. Whether it’s through behind-the-scenes glimpses of your team, interviews with satisfied customers, or thought leadership content, videos help build rapport and credibility, ultimately instilling confidence in your brand and driving conversions.

4

Demonstrating Value

Videos excel at demonstrating complex concepts or showcasing products and services in action. Whether it’s a walkthrough of how your product works, customer testimonials, or case studies, videos allow you to highlight key features and benefits in a compelling manner. Seeing is believing, and when potential customers can visualize themselves using your offering to solve their problems or fulfill their needs, they’re more inclined to make a purchase.

 

5

Enhanced memory footprint

With the rise of digital media and information overload, attention spans have become shorter. In addition to emotional responses video engages multiple senses, which enhances cognitive processing and memory retention. The combination creates a rich and immersive experience that stimulates different areas of the brain, making the content more memorable. When viewers are fully engaged with the content, they are more likely to remember it later and active later to create higher long-tail conversions.

In conclusion, the evidence is clear: video content is a potent catalyst for driving conversions on websites. By harnessing the power of video, businesses can elevate their online presence, increase user engagement, and ultimately drive more conversions. So, if you’re looking to take your website to the next level, it’s time to hit the record button and let your brand’s story unfold through the magic of video. 

In a digital world where visual and auditory content is taking over the screens, we must not forget the importance of captioning in terms of accessibility. Captioning is not just a nice-to-have feature, it opens the door for many people to participate in the digital world. This makes it a necessity for public actors, among others, to consider. 

People with hearing impairments, different language groups and people with learning difficulties benefit greatly from captions and subtitles. They enable people to understand sound-rich content regardless of hearing status or language barriers. At the same time, it improves search engine understanding and helps everyone find what they are looking for. When sharing your content online, remember to include captions – a small act with a big impact.   

A little effort to add subtitles means a huge impact on accessibility – it’s not just responsible, it’s smart business. But this effort is easy to reduce with today’s technology. Artificial intelligence opens new possibilities to make content accessible to a wide audience, and one major help is an intelligent AI subtitling tool. 

Traditional subtitling tools require manual work, which can be time-consuming, even expensive. This can prevent many content providers from paying sufficient attention to accessibility. Now, our intelligent subtitling tool, powered by artificial intelligence and included in our Icareus Suite video platform, offers a fast, accurate and cost-effective way to add subtitles to your video content. 

The interface of the Icareus automatic captioning tool. The tool can be used to provide captions for videos in Finnish, Swedish or English.

This AI-based tool can automatically convert spoken language into text. The resulting raw text is perfectly understandable and often good as it is, but may require cleaning up the filler words, stuttering and other word repetition that often occurs in spoken language. Nevertheless, using AI texting can reduce the resources required for subtitling by up to 90%! 

The captions created can be easily translated into different languages afterwards with our subtitling tool, allowing for the content to be understood globally. This means that the language barrier is no longer a barrier, and people with hearing loss and different language groups can enjoy your videos. 

Our subtitling tool, with a wide range of translation languages.

Smart captioning tools not only improve accessibility, they also save time and resources. They free up content producers’ time from creating manual subtitles and allow them to focus on the quality of the content itself.  

When your goal is to make your content accessible and reach a wider audience, don’t hesitate to use our AI subtitling tools. Icareus is ready to help you promote accessibility and make the world a place where everyone can participate. 

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Learn more about the solution, how it works, and how to use it on the Icareus Helpdesk.

Businesses across industries are harnessing the power of analytics to gain valuable insights and drive success. Understanding viewer behavior and preferences is essential to optimize engagement and achieve desired outcomes. Behind the scenes, video analytics play a crucial role in unlocking this valuable information.

In this article, we will delve into the world of video analytics, exploring how they provide businesses with the necessary tools to make informed decisions, refine their strategies, and ultimately drive success.

Deep Dive into Viewer Behavior

A treasure trove of information. How would you make use of it?

Video analytics provide a treasure trove of data, offering an in-depth understanding of viewer behavior. By analyzing metrics such as view duration, drop-off points, and engagement levels, businesses gain insights into how viewers interact with their video content. This information helps identify which parts of a video are most compelling, where viewers may lose interest, and how to optimize content to maintain engagement throughout.

With the ability to track and analyze viewer behavior, businesses can make data-driven decisions to refine their video strategies. By understanding what resonates with their audience, they can tailor their content to meet specific preferences and achieve desired outcomes. This deep dive into viewer behavior provides a competitive edge, ensuring that businesses create captivating and engaging video experiences for both internal and external viewers.

This understanding is equally vital for live and virtual events or webinars. Knowing how and when participants engage during the event and the post-event viewing of the recording is crucial.

Audience Segmentation and Personalization

Video analytics enable businesses to segment their audience based on various criteria such as location, demographics, or viewing habits. This segmentation helps tailor content to specific target groups, delivering personalized experiences that resonate on a deeper level. By analyzing viewer data, businesses can create targeted marketing campaigns, recommend related videos, or offer personalized recommendations.

By leveraging audience segmentation and personalization, businesses can build stronger connections with their viewers. Delivering content that is relevant to individual preferences enhances engagement, fosters loyalty, and increases the likelihood of achieving desired outcomes. Video analytics empower businesses to refine their strategies and provide tailored experiences that drive success.

Optimizing Content Delivery

Video analytics provide valuable insights into the performance of video content across different devices, platforms, and networks. By monitoring metrics such as buffering rates, load times, and video quality, businesses can optimize content delivery to ensure a seamless viewing experience for their audience.

Leveraging this data, businesses can proactively identify and address potential video performance issues, such as optimizing video quality settings for adaptive video delivery.

By optimizing content delivery, businesses can minimize viewer frustration, reduce video abandonment rates, and maintain high-quality experiences. Video analytics act as a guiding light, allowing businesses to fine-tune their technical infrastructure and deliver video content flawlessly.

Measuring ROI and Performance

Compare...
And contrast.

Determining the return on investment (ROI) and overall performance of video content is crucial for businesses. Video analytics provide the necessary metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of video campaigns, measure engagement levels, and track viewer conversions. Businesses can effectively measure the success of their external video initiatives by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and social shares. Internal video success can be evaluated through various metrics, including video plays, average viewing times, and completion rates.

By analyzing ROI and performance metrics, businesses can identify what works and what needs improvement. This data-driven approach empowers businesses to allocate resources effectively, optimize their video strategies, and maximize the impact of their video content.

Conclusion

Behind the scenes, video analytics are the driving force that empowers businesses to make informed decisions, refine strategies, and ultimately drive success. Embracing video analytics is the key to leveraging data-driven insights and creating engaging, personalized, and successful video experiences.

Want to find out what your videos can reveal, given proper tools to do so with? Icareus’ Video Cloud offers comprehensive video analytics that enable businesses to unlock the full potential of their video content.

A paradigm shift is currently underway in the sports industry as content owners are moving towards direct-to-consumer business models. This transformation has primarily begun with top leagues and the ones that lack lucrative TV distribution agreements. Streaming services are found compelling as they allow leagues to redefine how they connect with their fans, partners, and advertisers. OTT has emerged as a new approach to improve leagues’ reach.

However, grassroots sports, despite their potential, have remained largely neglected, partly due to the absence of viable business models. Consequently, this has lead to a situation where most games are streamed on social media platforms, leading to a loss of control over how the sports are portrayed to fans and other stakeholders. 

Solving the grassroots sports streaming and monetization challenge is pivotal for federations, clubs, athletes, and fans alike. Acknowledging the challenges faced by grassroots sports in terms of visibility, control over content, and monetization, 

Icareus’ vision is centered around these three key drivers for change 

1. Improved game and event discovery,
2. Democratized content production,
3. A sustainable and inclusive business model.

1

One of the primary concerns is the fragmented nature of grassroots sports streaming, scattered across various social media platforms, making it challenging for fans to discover and follow their favorite teams and events. Streaming has become a wild west where federations and clubs have completely lost their control on how their sports is portrayed to fans. The driving change that is needed lies in enhancing game and event discovery, moving it away from social media and consolidating all streaming onto a single user-friendly platform, simplifying the process of game discovery and enhancing the overall fan experience.  

2

The next challenge is to get as many games streamed as possible. We must recognize the importance of inclusive content production, given that it is unfeasible for federations or clubs to manage it centrally.  This necessitates the collective inclusion of team managers, parents, friends, and family to the content production workflows. To facilitate their onboarding, there is a need for user-friendly tools and autonomy for the “grassroots streamers.”

3

The final motivation to get everyone onboard is monetization. A sustainable and mutually beneficial business model is crucial to ensure that all stakeholders find value in the process. This can be achieved by applying the platform economics principle, where most of the revenues can be routed directly to the clubs, without complicated accounting processes. Empowering grassroots sports not only fosters talent development but also taps into new revenue streams within an underserved market. 

Once we can achieve these three key drivers, there will be an explosion of grassroot sports streaming! 

Unfortunately, traditional sports streaming platforms often prioritize major leagues, sidelining grassroots events and tournaments. In response, Icareus has developed a cloud platform that brings all the stakeholders together for the production and consumption of games. At the same time, it improves fan engagement and loyalty. 

Icareus leverages crowdsourcing to turn virtually everyone into content creators, facilitating event and game streaming. The Icareus Sports OTT solution aggregates content from grassroots events within a specific sport, creating a one-stop destination for fans to access games, from top leagues to the smallest matches, all on a single video portal bearing the federation’s or club’s branding. In essence, it gives federations and clubs complete control over how games are streamed, the user experience, and the business model, facilitating a stronger connection with fans. 

Monetization is achieved through subscription models, pay-per-view options, and targeted advertising. Moreover, the platform’s business model ensures that the majority of the revenues generated are directed towards the grassroots teams, a pioneering step in the industry. 

In practice, all beloved sports content, from children’s leagues to senior divisions, can be found from a single source, seamlessly integrated and easily discoverable. By fostering this collaborative and integrated approach to sports streaming, the platform not only amplifies the reach and impact of grassroots sports but also creates a dynamic and engaging environment that benefits everyone involved, from the federations and clubs to the dedicated fans and players. 

In summary

The benefits of this holistic approach extend beyond mere convenience, with the potential to reshape the landscape of grassroots sports streaming, providing a sustainable and profitable model that caters to the needs of all stakeholders. 

Icareus Ltd is an online video cloud and broadcast TV specialist founded in 2001 and having offices in Finland and Spain. Icareus provides video cloud solutions and trusted broadcast TV platforms, and our solutions are enjoyed by millions of consumers via our broadcaster, operator, OTT and OVP customers in over 60 countries.  Combining online and broadcast has been the core of our activities over almost two decades. We’ve been making the change from linear TV to today’s multi-screen experience. 

More information: https://www.icareus.com  

Icareus Sports OTT is a turnkey white-label video cloud solution for sports of all kinds, team or individual, from floorball and football to tennis and martial arts. It offers versatile tools for the production, management, publication and (optionally) commercialization of sports videos and events. Both professional leagues and “grass roots” non-professional sports clubs can make use of this solution. 

More information: https://icareus.com/solutions-for-customer-groups/sports/ 

What makes a video accessible? How can you benefit from accessibility? And how can achieving accessibility be made easy for you? 

Jatka lukemista