Standardising Audience Figures Across the Industry

Around the world a number of different data suppliers produce datasets for their clients. These datasets are often provided as either CSV or Excel. From a data aggregator point of view these formats are cumbersome and error prone.

This website provides a number of suggested formats that attempt to standardize those being used so that a customer or aggregator does not have to deal with ever changing formats and inconsistencies.

There are four main categories of data to consider

• Common data - information about how the data was created and what it contains - see more
• Minute data - often aggregated at 15 minute intervals - see more
• Transmission data - representing a single transmission - see more
• Interval data - representing an advert or break between or within transmissions - see more

Yet Another Standard - it is possible that these format suggestions could be considered yet another format to be adopted and I would accept that argument if there were already existing standards in place - but to our knowledge there aren't any. This proposal has also been built with adaptability and future suggestions in mind.

Two specifications are available that both describe a very similar data structure - one in json and one in xml.

Because CSV / TSV / Excel files do not support a formal specification process no attempt has been made to provide a standard in these formats.