Rentrak boosts VOD-measurement business

InDemand, Magnolia are among new clients

By Danny King -- Video Business, 3/23/2009

MARCH 23 | In a move to further expand its audience-measurement unit, Rentrak will provide audience-measurement services for nine more video-on-demand providers, as sales flatten for its primary DVD distribution business.

Rentrak’s OnDemand Essentials subscribers now include InDemand Networks and Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures, while content providers such as Viacom’s Spike TV and News Corp.’s FX have added VOD channels to the tracking service, Rentrak said in a statement late last week.

Last month, Rentrak said fiscal third-quarter sales from its advanced media information division sales surged 20% from a year earlier and accounted for a third of Rentrak’s gross profit, while sales from its primary pay-per-transaction division fell 7%. Its overall earnings doubled from a year earlier.

“Consumers are engaging with on-demand content more than ever as the platform continues to deliver double digit growth,” Carol Hinnant, Rentrak’s senior VP of business development, said in the statement. “As the growth in usage continues, operators and content providers are increasing their content offerings, and the networks are looking to Rentrak to provide the accurately aggregated and reported data they need.”

Rentrak’s on-demand audience-measurement product serves 29 content providers, accounting for 54 million set-top boxes. Other new users of OnDemand Essentials include 4Kids Entertainment and ExerciseTV.

Last month, Rentrak said NBC Universal would start using its audience-measurement service to track how many people are downloading digital content from the NBC Universal licensees. In November, Rentrak signed an agreement for its viewer-measurement services with Dish Network, the No. 2 U.S. satellite-television service to DirecTV.