Run3TV, which provides an application platform for the ATSC 3.0 television standard, has partnered with audience measurement company TVision to provide second-by second measurement of viewing using its panel of 5,000 households in the United States. It will uses this panel data to complement its own viewing metrics and provide insights into when people are actually paying attention to television.
Run3TV was developed by Pearl TV and the Pearl Network consortium and spun out as an independent entity in June 2024. Its investors include Graham Media, Gray Television, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Hearst Television, TEGNA Inc, and The E.W. Scripps Company.
The name Run3TV is a reference to the ATSC 3.0 broadcasting standard, which is branded as NEXTGEN TV in the United States. Run3TV provides an ATSC 3.0 compliant application framework that can be used by developers and broadcasters to build and deploy applications.
When a viewer tunes to an ATSC 3.0 broadcast, smart televisions that have implemented Run3TV receive information in the broadcast signal enable the television to fetch the associated application designated by the broadcaster. That application, and the Run3TV application framework that it runs in, are loaded into the HTML5 browser on the TV and the television presents the app to the consumer.
Run3TV allows local stations to add new features and capabilities for viewers beyond just linear television, including programme re-start and personalised programming.
TVision maintains a panel of around 5,000 households in the United States, representing more than 14,000 individuals. It provides second-by-second, person-level data about what people are watching, and uses machine vision to detect whether they are paying attention to programmes and adverts.
“TVision is a respected and trusted voice in the audience measurement industry”, said Michael Collette, who was recently appointed as the chief executive of Run3TV. “Our focus with TVision is to enrich the data we collect describing TV viewing behaviour on Smart TVs with TVision data describing the number and demographics of viewers present in the room and associated attention metrics for broadcast and broadband ads.”
“We plan to use this information to improve broadcasters’ understanding of the audiences they are reaching, to better understand the viewing time ‘lift’ generated by Smart Broadcasting capabilities such as Program Re-Start, and to measure increases in attention metrics from Enhanced TV content applications built by our broadcasters and powered by the underlying Run3TV application.”
“We may also want to better understand how NEXTGEN TV broadcasting and its more contemporary features attract and retain younger audiences.”
Yan Liu, the chief executive of TVision, said: “The value of using person-level, second-by-second data is to better understand the audience size and demographics of viewers for both streaming and linear programming. Local stations can better position their inventory of available advertising when they have highly accurate co-viewing, demo, and attention metrics that help validate the real engagement levels for their programming.”
NEXTGEN TV services using ATSC 3.0 are now available in 76 markets in the United States, with more than 500 services potentially available to some 80 million households.