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China's Digital Mobile Television Bellwether TOWONA Endeavors to Jointly Establish Industrial Research Standards With AC Nielsen

Posted on: Tuesday, 24 June 2008, 09:02 CDT

BEIJING, June 24 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- TOWONA Media Company announced today that the Company has reached an agreement with global information providers Nielsen Media and Sinomonitor International. The agreement focuses on a joint endeavor to build new evaluation standards for digital mobile television, based on the conventional TV research system, which is to conduct systematic research on the nature of digital mobile television as well as viewing behavior, audience composition, and advertising effects. Previously, TOWONA has enjoyed successful cooperation with CTR that included in-coach TV media audience research and evaluations on the effects of advertising. All research institutes mobilized by TOWONA are currently heavily engaged in building the research standards that follow those methods used in conventional TV research, which means digital mobile television as a media is in the process of transforming from an alternative form to a must in terms of consumer advertising.

Formerly labelled as an outdoor media, this cooperation between TOWONA and the three market research giants is expected to develop digital mobile television from small mass to popularization and from margin to mainstream media. Earlier this year, Hu Zhanfan, the Vice Director of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, pointed out that the changes that have taken place to digital mobile television are related to its ability to reach a wider audience and in the methods used to reach that audience, meaning it has become a mass media and a media of broadcast and television.

Statistics show an 18% compound annual growth rate in China's media advertisement market in recent years. The year 2007 witnessed 14.7 billion dollars of advertisement, in which TV media occupied 40.8% of the market, along with a compound annual growth rate of 16%. Although the out-of-home media represented by TOWONA'S in-coach TV media only held 14.3% of the market, its compound annual growth rate has reached 20%, highlighting a strong market potential.

Facing a trend like this, conventional television media is actively carrying out the integration of multimedia to take possession of other media markets rather than just the original family media market to combat against the ever-growing digital mobile television market. Conventional television media is making great efforts to seize all kinds of media channel resources, such as vehicles, commercial buildings and communication tools. Currently, it has succeeded in areas of public transportation, taxis, subways, trains, mobile phones and commercial buildings, and new TV media forms are continuously being pushed out. The tide of integration is emerging.

Having seen this tide coming, the three market research giants -- Nielsen Media, Sinomonitor and CTR -- began cooperating with TOWONA, China's No.1 enterprise in the area of digital mobile television, in order to apply themselves to the establishment of monitoring standards for digital mobile television, with the purpose of taking a lead role in building industrial evaluation standards in the emerging media market.

The main content in the cooperation between TOWONA and the research institutes is to carry out a continuous investigation on audience ratings and advertisement monitoring of in-coach TV media on the basis of television media investigation. Meanwhile, special investigations will be conducted on key areas including evaluations on media value and advertising effects of in-coach TV media, as well as evaluations on audience characteristics and value in fixed regions across China.

The digital mobile television market has now become a hotspot across all institutes. Early in November 2007, the "Blue Book for the Development of Car-loaded Mobile TVs in China 2007," was jointly published by CTR, CCID and CMMR. According to data, due to commercial opportunities offered by the Olympic Games, the distribution of car-loaded TVs will reach to 600,000 in 2008, representing a year-on-year increase of over 80%. Therefore, market capacity will be further enlarged.

Professor Yu Guoming, Head of the Public Opinion School of the Renmin University of China, believes that the new commercial mode of digital mobile television is a very significant result of key changes to the traditional viewing habits of the Chinese population, along with the market reshuffle of viewing contents and the scattering of viewers and the advertising market in general. As a matter of fact, any commercial breakthrough will lead to an extreme crisis of conventional TV media in China.

Of course, TV advertising is no stock market. Senior media research experts of Mediach.com have forecast that some 7.6 billion dollars will be expended for TV ads in 2008, and in 2009, the expenditure will rise to 8.2 billion dollars. Therefore, the significance of TOWONA's actions is to expand the conventional TV advertising market by the join-in of digital mobile television.

Not only making great progress in operation, TOWONA is also driving the whole industry to the direction of standardization and systematization. The Report on the "Integrative Strength of China's Digital Mobile Television Operators," jointly issued by research institutes, led by the Public Opinion School of Renmin University, in China's Public Transport Digital Media Forum, shows that TOWONA, topped the list with 360.04 points, far higher than the second placed Bus-online (237.91 pts) and third placed VisionChina Media (233.49 pts). The establishment of the digital mobile television research standards by industry leaders will help give a definite position to the nature of digital mobile television and give an important sign to the orientation of maturity, which also further consolidates TOWONA's leading position in the industry.

TOWONA

CONTACT: Echo Wu, +86-10-5927-0032, for TOWONA

Source: PRNewswire

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