TRA adds TiVo data to customer analytics

TiVo has signed an agreement with marketing research company TRA Inc., allowing TRA to license and market TiVo subscriber data as part of the TRA Media TRAnalytics service.

TRAnalytics correlates purchasing data — culled from loyalty card programs — with media exposure to give a single source view of consumer habits. The deal with TiVo will help the company integrate anonymous viewer data from 1.7 million TiVo subscribers with the shopping information to evaluate ROI of media spend.

“The media measurement space to date has been based on very small samples trying to understand what's going on in 100 million homes across the country [and] what's driving response to TV advertising,” said Mark Lieberman, chairman, founder and CEO of TRA. “When you consider the number of networks and the number of brands that are on TV, you need a significant sample size to show that on a much more granular level.”

TRA already has data agreements with three cable providers, but TiVo is the first fully national data that it has used.

“By licensing TiVo data we can match up the TiVo box data with our purchase databases around the country, so advertisers can know that cause and effect they're looking for,” Lieberman continued. “TiVo is an important data provider for us because it accelerates our national footprint, and it provides DVR information, which is time-shifted, so it gives us the ability to understand how people are watching live television and how they are watching time-shifted.”

TRA clients — which already include CBS and MediaVest — will be able to log into the TRA proprietary system online, create inputs and run reports on the data. Other clients fall into one of three categories: networks, agencies and advertisers.