Saudi TV ratings to be ready by 2007
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 A Dutch consulting firm has achieved a “sturdy consensus” among advertisers, media buying agencies, and broadcasters on developing a people meter-based rating system in Saudi Arabia by next year. The project, code-named Project Illumination,
came into being this August when a consortium of the media buying agencies, including UM7, Starcom, MindShare, OMD, and Mediaedge:cia, raised $300,000 to hire the Netherlands-based PointLogic.
According to Faisal Sabzwari, Procter and Gamble’s corporate marketing director and chairman of the Project Illumination board, PointLogic had reached “90 percent agreement” on the issues needed to begin work on implementation. He said the Dutch firm proposed a set of neutral criteria to choose a research company; drew up the specific characteristics of the population sample; and designed a system to split the operating costs. PointLogic, which has worked on similar projects in China and the Netherlands, is expected to announce the agreement in early November.
The firm has yet to decide on a measurement apparatus, whether it be set-top or mobile; and on a frequency for the proposed system, either on a minute-by-minute basis or per ad break. Ratings should be available by September of 2007, Zeina Baaklini of Unilever Gulf told MEB Journal.
The people meters are important, according to Baaklini, because audience statistics in the region are “full of different viewership claims and over-claims... This is not a healthy situation for either media, advertisers or viewers.”
Disagreements over viewership numbers led to a 2005 lawsuit between Future TV and the Ipsos-Stat Lebanon ratings service. Analysts say it could take time to overcome industry skepticism.
“So far, all joint industry projects have had a very short lifespan,” said Jihad Fakhreddine, media research manager for the Pan Arab Research Center.
In addition to Procter and Gamble, members of Project Illumination’s board include MBC, LBC, SaudiTV, Publicis Groupe Media, MindShare, and Omnicom Media Group.
The project faces further challenges in its long-term goal of expanding to other Gulf states, with their much less homogeneous populations. “There are 170 nationalities in the UAE. You can’t just settle for 500 homes – you will need a larger panel size,” says Fakhreddine, whose company briefly ran a people-metering service in the UAE that was subsequently scrapped.
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