Rentrak, MasterCard In Media Data Deal

Multi-screen media measurement firm Rentrak Corp. today announced an agreement with MasterCard that brings together Rentrak’s TV viewing data from millions of U.S. homes and MasterCard’s consumer trends and insights derived from billions of payment transactions. Together, the two companies will provide advertisers and agencies with data on media consumption and aggregated consumer buyer behavior to help them reach their intended audiences more effectively.

Rentrak said the collaboration “will allow local and national advertisers and agencies, networks and stations to plan, buy and sell TV programs on the basis of consumer product consumption trends ranging across a wide variety of categories including retail, telecommunications, grocery, entertainment, travel and family and quick service restaurants to name a few.”

Under the agreement, MasterCard Advisors, a unit of MasterCard Worldwide, will provide Rentrak anonymous, aggregated insights on consumer spending behavior and trends within each category.

“Advertisers continue to struggle with finding the most efficient way to ensure they are reaching the right audiences,” said Susan Grossman, SVP, media solutions, MasterCard Advisors. “MasterCard Advisors leverages real, aggregated transaction data to provide insight into trends around consumer buying behavior that helps clients make better business decisions. We look forward to working with Rentrak to offer the advertising community actionable insights to help them serve more relevant messages to their intended audiences.”

“As the census-based TV ratings currency, clients have the opportunity to combine the stable and predictive ratings information from Rentrak with the added benefit of analytics derived from MasterCard’s database of consumer spending insights, which will result in more effective selling and buying of advertising,” said Bill Livek, CEO of Rentrak.