Rentrak Debuts Syndication Ratings Service

Rentrak is launching a new service to provide ratings and other data for nationally syndicated TV programs.

The move positions Rentrak to compete with Nielsen in regularly providing viewership data for syndicated shows. There was no immediate reaction from Nielsen to Rentrak’s announcement Monday afternoon.

The company said its new Rentrak Syndicated Service “will report national ratings and impressions for live, C3 and C7 metrics for total households as well as automotive purchasing, retailer spend, credit worthiness and political audiences based on daily reporting from all 210 markets.”

The first syndication company to subscribe to the new service is Sony Pictures Television, Rentrak said. “As Rentrak’s first syndication client, we recognized that additional measurement would be critical to the market,” said SPT President of Advertiser Sales Strategy and Research Amy Carney in a prepared statement.

Other subscribers to the new service include at least three ad agencies – Horizon Media, Carat and Omnicom Media Group, the Rentrak announcement said. Promoting the new service, Rentrak President of National Television Chris Wilson said in a prepared statement that it “will open up new advertising verticals for the syndication media market.”

Rentrak measures viewership of TV shows and the commercials that run during them. The company claims to collect viewing data for cable, satellite and telephone company services from “more than 36 million TV sets,” and Video-on-Demand data from “approximately 120 million TVs.” The Rentrak data includes viewership tallies plus household demographic data such as buying habits and purchasing patterns.