VietNamNet Bridge - While tens of television stations are willing to pay billions of dong to measure their viewers’ habits, there are only two service providers.

Hanh, who works at the ad division of a television station in HCM City, said the figures about ratings are mandatory in documents for televisions show when offering ad sales or calling for funding.

“They (manufacturers or ad firms) want to know how many viewers they can ‘buy’ for every dong they spend,” Hanh said.

While tens of television stations are willing to pay billions of dong to measure their viewers’ habits, there are only two service providers.

Big media/advertisement firms tend to buy service packages which measure the ratings of many different television channels. The service packages are worth from several billions to tens of billions of dong. 

Every TV channel has to spend at least VND1 billion a year to measure its ratings.

Hanh said it is difficult to say whether service fee is high or low, because the fees would depend on the information buyers want. 

Besides, since there is only one service provider – TNS Media Vietnam, a subsidiary of Kantar Media Group -- one cannot compare services provided by different firms.

However, the monopoly in the market has been broken as the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) has unexpectedly announced it will join to the market.

According to Pham Hoang Hai, director of the Center for Testing and broadcasting services belonging to MIC, the rating measurement plan was figured out in 2008, and the system was put into trial in Hanoi and HCM City in 2014.

The center’s rating measurement system was set up completely with 1,200 People Meters installed at 500 households in Hanoi and 700 in HCM City. The system measures the data of 120 different TV channels.

Hai said the system’s technology provides data about 100 TV channels with detailed metrics on every program. 

MIC said measurements not only help improve state management over televisions’ operation, but also bring revenue from service packages to TV channels and ad firms.

On July 27, a series of contracts were signed between the center and the first clients – HTV, VTC, THVL and BTV, and two pay-TV stations SCTV and VTVCab.

The representative of a Hanoi-based ad firm said that the statistical fidelity is what ad firms worry about. He said the presence of more rating measurement service providers was good news for service users.

Though the number of internet users has increased rapidly in Vietnam, TV remains the major entertainment channel. 

According to Doan Duy Khoa from Nielsen, 72 percent of Vietnamese receive information mostly via TV.

In Hanoi and HCM City, 38 percent of broadcasting time is reserved for drama series, and 6 percent for game shows.


Xuan Nam