EMFA Article 24. Audience measurement

The definition of audience measurement should cover measurement systems developed as agreed by industry standards within self-regulatory organisations, like the Joint Industry Committees, and measurement systems developed outside self-regulatory approaches. The latter tend to be used by certain online players, including online platforms, that self-measure or provide their proprietary audience measurement systems to the market without abiding by the commonly agreed industry standards or best practices. Given the significant impact that such audience measurement systems have on the advertising and media markets, they should be covered by this Regulation. In particular, the capacity to provide access to media content and the ability to target their users with advertising allow online platforms to compete with the media service providers whose content they distribute. Thus, the definition of audience measurement should be understood as including measurement systems that enable the collection, interpretation or other processing of information about the use of media content and content created by users on online platforms that are primarily used to access such content. That would ensure that providers of audience measurement systems that are intermediaries involved in content distribution are transparent about their audience measurement activities, fostering the ability of media service providers and advertisers to make informed choices.

Audience measurement has a direct impact on the allocation and prices of advertising, which represents a key revenue source for the media sector. It is a crucial tool for evaluating the performance of media content and understanding the preferences of audiences in order to plan the future production of content. Accordingly, media market players, in particular media service providers and advertisers, should be able to rely on objective and comparable audience data stemming from transparent, unbiased and verifiable audience measurement solutions. In principle, audience measurement should be carried out in accordance with widely accepted industry self-regulatory mechanisms. However, certain new players that have emerged in the media ecosystem, such as online platforms, do not abide by the industry standards or best practices agreed through relevant industry self-regulatory mechanisms and provide their proprietary measurement services without making available information on their methodologies. That could result in audience measurement solutions that are not comparable, information asymmetries among media market players and potential market distortions, to the detriment of the equality of opportunities for media service providers in the market. Therefore, it is important that audience measurement systems and methodologies made available on the market ensure an appropriate level of transparency, impartiality, inclusiveness, proportionality, non-discrimination, comparability and verifiability.

Relevant market players have traditionally agreed upon a set of measurement methodologies in order to carry out audience measurement in a transparent and reliable manner and develop impartial and trusted benchmarks to be used when assessing the performance of media and advertising content. Those measurement methodologies are either reflected in relevant industry standards and best practices or are organised and consolidated by self-regulatory bodies, such as the Joint Industry Committees, which are established in several Member States and bring together all the key stakeholders operating in the media and advertising industry. In order to enhance the verifiability, reliability and comparability of audience measurement methodologies, in particular online, transparency obligations should be laid down for providers of proprietary audience measurement systems that do not follow the relevant industry standards and best practices or do not abide by the industry benchmarks agreed within the relevant self-regulatory bodies. Under those obligations, such actors, where requested and to the extent possible, should provide advertisers and media service providers or parties acting on their behalf with information describing the methodologies employed for the measurement of the audience. Such information could consist in providing elements such as the size of the sample measured, the definition of the indicators that are measured, the metrics, the measurement methods, the measurement period, the coverage of measurement and the margin of error. To ensure an adequate level of effectiveness of those transparency obligations and to foster the trustworthiness of proprietary audience measurement systems, the methodologies and the way in which they are applied should be subject to independent audits on a yearly basis. Furthermore, in order to help achieve a level playing field and foster the clarity and contestability of the relevant information that is provided to the market, it is also key that the audience measurement results be made available. For that reason, media service providers should be able to request providers of proprietary audience measurement systems to provide information on the audience measurement results concerning their own media content and services. In particular, providers of proprietary audience measurement systems should ensure that that information is provided in an industry-standard form, includes the relevant non-aggregated data, is of high quality and is detailed enough to allow the requesting media service providers to carry out an effective and meaningful assessment of the reach and performance of their media content and services. The need to increase the transparency and contestability of proprietary audience measurement systems should be reconciled with the freedom of providers of audience measurement systems to develop their own measurement systems as part of their freedom to conduct business. In particular, the transparency obligations imposed on providers of audience measurement systems by this Regulation should be without prejudice to the protection of the trade secrets of providers of audience measurement systems as defined in Directive (EU) 2016/943 of the European Parliament and of the Council . The obligations imposed by this Regulation should also be without prejudice to any obligations that apply to providers of audience measurement systems under Regulation (EU) 2019/1150 or Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council , including those concerning ranking, self-preferencing or providing access to performance measuring tools and the relevant data.

Codes of conduct, drawn up either by the providers of audience measurement systems or by organisations or associations representing them, together with media service providers and providers of online platforms, as well as their representative organisations, and other relevant stakeholders, could contribute to the effective application of this Regulation and should, therefore, be encouraged. Self-regulatory mechanisms widely recognised in the media industry have already been used to foster high quality standards in the area of audience measurement, ensuring the impartiality of the measurements and the comparability of the results. Their further development could be seen as an effective tool for the industry to agree on the practical solutions needed for ensuring compliance of audience measurement systems and their methodologies with the principles of transparency, impartiality, inclusiveness, proportionality, non-discrimination, comparability and verifiability. When drawing up such codes of conduct, in consultation with all relevant stakeholders and notably media service providers and providers of online platforms, account could be taken, in particular, of the increasing digitalisation of the media sector and the need to make increasingly comparable the different audience measurement solutions available on the market. In fact, comparability of audience measurement results is key to achieving a level playing field among media market players as it enables media service providers and advertisers to better gauge the success of their offering, which users increasingly consume across different devices and platforms. For that reason, the relevant industry players should be encouraged to make use of codes of conduct and other self-regulatory mechanisms to foster the development of audience measurement solutions which are comparable across different media and platforms. In addition, such codes of conduct should also foster the development of solutions ensuring the proper measurement of audiences of small media service providers.