Audience measurement organisations
Organisations in charge of media audience measurement in France share a common identity. They are joint bodies, eg they are created and run by representatives of two main actors that rule the business of media and advertising, media outlets, and media agencies.
As an archetypal joint body, Médiamétrie is the dominant organisation for audience measurement of media markets. Médiamétrie shareholders basically include media agencies (35 percent), TV channels (35 percent), and radio stations (27 percent). This capital distribution attracts criticism towards audience measurement: How to ensure the objectivity and scientific reliability of an audience that is created by firms that are both its provider and its client? Anyway the different audience measurements offered by Médiamétrie regulate the interested media markets.
National TV audience is based on a panel of families that accept to connect their different devices to a Médiamat box. The Médiamat is a panel of households equipped with one or more TV sets in their main residence. It has been constructed to represent both the socio-demographic characteristics of households in metropolitan France and also the characteristics of the TV offer available: terrestrial digital offer, cable and satellite and broadband. The Médiamat panel is made up of nearly 4,300 households, around 10,500 individuals aged 4 and over. TV audience is thus delivered each single day to clients.
The radio audience is measured through a representative sample of 126,000 individuals who live in metropolitan France, aged 13 and over, from those who responded to the 126,000 radio survey. The individuals who agree to take part in the radio panel, each receive a listening record per week and a listening habits questionnaire, as well as the equipment they need to fill in and send the forms. The 126,000-sample radio survey is issued quarterly.
Médiamétrie//NetRatings, a merge of Nielsen Online and Médiamétrie, is the standard tool to measure the audience of Internet and online news media for marketing and advertising purposes. The survey is carried out by phone every month with 1,000 individuals aged 11 and over, including 13 percent mobile-only users. The field study is carried out over 11 months in the year. The study is used to define the Médiamétrie//NetRatings Panel.
The Alliance pour les Chiffres de la Presse et des Médias (Alliance for Data on Press and Media - ACPM) is in charge of measuring the audience and the circulation of print press. In addition it certifies the audience of websites, apps and digital radios. The ACPM is a joint body composed by media outlets, media agencies and largest advertisers (partly through the Union des Annonceurs (French Union of Advertisers - UDA).