STB-Based MENA Audience Contract for Kantar Media

Kantar Media has been appointed by MENA region TV entertainment company OSN to deliver a new return path audience measurement service based on data from its subscribers' set top boxes.

OSN Group offers premium entertainment in 22 countries in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, based around global and local TV series and films and including content from Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures. The Group was formed in 2009 by the merger of the two largest subscription TV networks in the region, Orbit and Showtime Arabia, and is a subsidiary of Kuwaiti company KIPCO.

The service, which is already operational, taps tens of thousands of set-top boxes installed across the region and uses the reporting tool AdvantEdge, developed by Kantar Media's TechEdge unit and featuring data validation and processing, as well as 'capping' to adjust long viewing sessions to realistic levels.

Keld Nielsen (pictured), Business Development Director and TechEdge CEO at Kantar Media, comments: 'We are pleased to partner with OSN to unlock the value of their subscriber data. As the viewing landscape and its viewers habits are profoundly changing, it has never been more important to harness all data assets at your disposal to maximise audience insights and opportunities to grow. We look forward to expanding our partnerships in the region to integrate and enrich more data sources in the future to serve more operators across the region'.

Web sites: www.osn.com and www.kantarmedia.com .