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Discovery to measure Winter Olympics viewing across platforms

As Discovery prepares for its inaugural Games coverage from South Korea next week under its $1.4 billion multiplatform rights deal with the International Olympics Committee, the content company plans to deploy the Total Video system to capture consumer viewing and engagement across its Eurosport channel and Eurosport Player app.

The programmer is teaming with advertising and public relations agency Publicis Media's Sport and Entertainment division on Total Video methodology, which will gauge three categories: video, users and engagement across the myriad screens that will play across Europe.

Jean-Briac Perrette, president and CEO of Discovery Networks International, in an interview said Total Video seeks to garner data that is "reflective of the way people consume content in general and sports in particular today." He said it is also "part of Discovery’s promise to the IOC" that its deal would deliver "more countries, more people and more screens" to the Games from 2018 through 2024.

Eurosport CEO Peter Hutton, who labeled the presentations across various platforms as "a bit of a jigsaw puzzle," said in an interview that consumers' evolving media habits are "a sign of the times."

Under Publicis Media methodology, video will capture the number of views across Discovery’s own pay- and free-TV services, as well as its streaming services and apps.

User data will summarize all those who use Discovery’s varied owned-and-operated vehicles, including free-to-air, pay television, streaming services, digital, apps and social media. Traditional audience data from broadcast partners throughout Europe will also be integrated.

On the engagement front, Total Video will cover the number of likes, shares and comments on Discovery’s social media platforms.

Total Video is akin to NBCUniversal Media LLC's Total Audience Delivery, which melds broadcast and cable watching, as well as streaming viewership from NBC apps on tablets, smartphones and connected TVs. TAD has supplanted NBCU's longstanding practice of selling the Olympics based on TV household metric guarantees.

Centered on persons 2+, TAD, according to Dan Lovinger, executive vice president of advertising sales at NBC Sports Group, is a demographic that is common to linear and digital and will enable NBC Olympics to move commercial messages back and forth between platforms to deliver on ad campaign promises.

But unlike the U.S. Olympics rights-holder, which is using TAD as currency for Olympic ad sales, Discovery is initially deploying Total Video as a mechanism to gain acumen about how Europeans will watch the action from PyeongChang.

Perrette noted that the U.S. is one large country with one primary language and Nielsen Holdings serves as the principal third-party audience measurement company. Eurosport’s coverage extends across most of the continent, with people speaking multiple languages, and programmers using different measurement sources for different platforms.

He said Publicis was selected to develop a more unified methodology because it has "a large presence across Europe and has a relationship with the IOC."

Discovery’s coverage of the 2018 Olympic will mark a departure for enthusiasts in Europe, many of whom have received coverage from state public broadcasters that presented the Games commercial-free over the years.

That, Perrette said, adds to a complex Olympic ecosystem, with ad deals constructed on a Pan-European basis, multiple countries or in a single territory. Moreover, advertising spending, which will contribute about one-third of Eurosport’s revenue from PyeongChang, versus two-thirds from its myriad sub-licensing deals, stems from sponsorship dollars, including contributions for IOC partners and spot buys that spread across linear and digital outlets.

Discovery and Publicis plan on passing along the findings: "We’re going to share the insights with clients," Perrette said.

By establishing a picture of who is watching on what screen and when, Perrette believes the new tracking system can form the underpinnings for "a currency that will be in place for the Tokyo Summer Games in 2020."

But he and the company ultimately hope to discover a more streamlined measurement picture: "Maybe over the course of our Olympics rights we’ll have an industry standard."