Dish signs deal to provide set-top data to Nielsen, re-ups with comScore

Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) has signed separate multi-year agreements with Nielsen and comScore to provide the research companies with data from its network of pay-TV set-tops. 

The deal with comScore, announced Friday, renews an existing agreement. The pact with Nielsen, announced today, comes after Nielsen reportedly offered Comcast $100 million last year for exclusive rights to its set-top data.  

"We are aggressively investing and enhancing our local and national TV measurement business by offering clients an innovative suite of solutions that provide higher quality insights and specificity. Dish's set-top-box data is the first nationwide dataset to be integrated with our panel data, reaching the perfect balance of deep viewing characteristics and the granularity of large datasets," said Steve Hasker, chief operating officer of Nielsen.

"Dish is a major partner that helped us change the measurement landscape by allowing massive and passive television measurement across a national footprint," said comScore CEO Serge Matta. "With our renewed partnership, advertisers can continue to get credible measurement, while creating ways to further increase the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising campaigns."

Dish's set-top data will be integrated into Nielsen's local TV measurement service across all 210 designated market areas. The data will complement local and national products including Nielsen Scarborough, Nielsen Data Fusion, Nielsen Media Custom Insights, as well as multiple national insight services. Additionally, the research company will be able to use the set-top data for tools measuring the effectiveness of advertising.

Dish has been among the most aggressive pay-TV operators in terms of marketing data from its set-tops. In fact, the satellite operator began exploiting this info back in 2012 — earlier than any other U.S. operator.

"Nielsen is the industry's currency and adding aggregated Dish set-top-box viewership data to Nielsen's products will enhance the granularity and clarity of the insights that Nielsen provides," said Warren Schlichting, Dish executive VP of marketing, programming and media sales. "This will allow advertisers and networks to improve their marketing and programming decisions even as television viewing itself becomes more fragmented."

For more:
- read this Nielsen press release
- read this comScore press release

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