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Given the region’s relatively small advertising market, industry consensus suggests the long-mooted introduction of a peoplemeter service will not come soon enough. Digital Broadcast spoke to the key identities involved in coordinating its introduction.

There is much hype about the growth of the Middle East TV and film industry, whether it is the launch of new FTA channels, the introduction of a new media zone or film festival or the trumpeted release of a new delivery platform.

This diversification and expansion should be encouraging the development of a lively, innovative and ultimately booming advertising industry with those buying the space and those offering it, reaping the rewards.

The stunted advertising revenues of the Middle East have been attributed to a variety of factors. The TV industry has regularly pointed to the lack of wide-scale and reliable audience measurement as a reason why ad revenues have not been keeping pace with the growth seen on all other fronts.

IpsosAGB, a joint venture between Ipsos and Nielson AGB, offers an established peoplemeter service in Lebanon with the viewing habits of 400 households currently monitored.

"We hope to expand the service to include 600 households in the near future," says Elie Aoun, COO at Ipsos MENA. "The proposed project in Saudi Arabia is likely to be more like 1800 households in total."

Rumours of this latter install - dubbed "Project Illumination" - have been circulating amongst industry figures for some time.

MBC has publicly acknowledged its role as one of its founders along with a host of other major broadcasters, media agencies and some of the regional industry's biggest advertisers.

"A committee was formed to put the peoplemeter in place. They invited six media research agencies to pitch for the job last year and IpsosAGB was selected to coordinate the peoplemeter project in Saudi Arabia, but from that point until now nothing has happened," says Aoun.

"We are just waiting for the committee to finalise the contract and confirm a launch date for the service."

With no sign of this announcement and Aoun estimating the required start up time of 9-12 months, it is unlikely that a peoplemeter could be in place before the end of 2009, almost two years later than the target start date of 2007.

"From our experience - with the exception of a few countries - when you have a peoplemeter operation you see an increase in advertising expenditure in those markets. It is well established that peoplemeters deliver much better results than any other system in the world," says Aoun.

"Having more accurate, minute by minute data will encourage advertisers to spend more money on TV. Those companies that are afraid of their campaign not being well measured, will no longer have those fears."

Aoun also stresses that advertisers are not the only beneficiaries of a peoplemeter system.

"Broadcasters will be able to measure the popularity of their programmes and it will help them to price their ad spots. They will get a breakdown of the territories where a programme is achieving high ratings or otherwise and a demographic overview of who is watching what," says Aoun.

The Nielsen AGB system that will be used in the Saudi Arabian installation will be similar to the hardware currently used in the peoplemeter project in Lebanon.

"The UNITAM meter was developed in response to the challenges facing various TAM (Television Audience Measurement) organisations as technological developments have accelerated across the last few years, particularly with regard to non-linear viewing," says Edouard Monin, CEO of Ipsos Stat AGB Nielsen Media Research.

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