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Local TV Station KTSF in San Francisco Launches Nielsen-Measured Mobile TV App in App Store

3 minute read | June 2014

Mobile viewing to credit local TV ratings and provide granular insight into early adopter viewing behavior

App measured on iOS platforms

NEW YORK – June 23, 2014 – KTSF and Nielsen announced today that KTSF, an independent, full-power station, available to over 1.7 million Asian-Americans in and around the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose area has launched its local TV App in the Apple App Store and fully implemented Nielsen proprietary mobile measurement software in order to inform its research and insights and drive advertising effectiveness.

As one of the largest Asian broadcasters in the U.S., KTSF’s viewers have consistently demonstrated mobile device adoption and digital viewing trends above the national average population making mobile measurement business critical. According to Nielsen’s Cross-Platform report, Asians currently watch 19 percent more video on smartphones per month than the average person. Viewers will have access to both Live and On-Demand television programming in the San Francisco Bay area. Nielsen’s mobile measurement software allows clients to go beyond how many viewers download an App and time spent to understand granular information important to advertisers such as demographics; which ad campaigns or program episodes were watched; and the difference in viewing behavior of live programming and On Demand. Supplemental mobile viewing will contribute to existing television audience estimates with mobile viewers allowing KTSF to identify additional viewing that it is not currently receiving credit for today.

The KTSF App is powered by Syncbak – the media technology company that enables users to watch live, in-market broadcast television – which successfully integrated Nielsen’s proprietary Software Development Kit (SDK) in April 2014. The Nielsen SDK allows clients in local markets, who are encoding their content with Nielsen Watermarks, to measure audiences across mobile platforms and, later this year, include that viewing in their television ratings when streaming the same program and same advertising as the live television feed. Measurement of the KTSF App on the Android platform will follow shortly.

“KTSF has perfect market positioning to leverage the App in order to move forward with incorporating any additive viewership into our traditional ratings. The San Francisco Bay area is not only one of the highest ranked DMAs for Asian Americans, but also among the top iPad, tablet and smartphone penetration and that penetration is growing at a brisk pace. We think Nielsen’s SDK, allowing us to be at the cutting edge of audience measurement, will help paint a clearer picture of our overall audience to advertisers,” said Michael Sherman, General Manager, KTSF.

“Nielsen and KTSF are working together to reflect a new reality in content consumption on smartphones and tablets,” said Farshad Family, SVP, Local Product Leadership at Nielsen. “Through this proprietary software, Nielsen is able to measure a non-English speaking segment of the U.S. and take further steps towards capturing insights about all segments of viewing population. We are excited to help KTSF take the next step in an effort to innovate and monetize mobile local viewers alongside their existing television audience.”

ABOUT KTSF

KTSF has been broadcasting Asian-language content since 1976. KTSF is an independent, full-power television station providing news and entertainment programming to over 2.75 million television households.  Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, KTSF broadcasts in 10 languages and is the only station in the US to broadcast nightly, live news programming in Cantonese and Mandarin. KTSF is available over-the-air on channel 26 and on cable channel 8 on Comcast Cable throughout the Northern California market.  DirecTV, Dish Network and AT&T U-Verse also carry KTSF.  KTSF is the first Asian media outlet in the United States to offer Nielsen Media Research data to its clients. 

ABOUT NIELSEN

Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is a global information and measurement company with leading market positions in marketing and consumer information, television and other media measurement, online intelligence and mobile measurement. Nielsen has a presence in approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA, and Diemen, the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

CONTACTS:

Nielsen: Flavie Lemarchand-Wood, flavie.lemarchand-wood@nielsen.comKTSF: Michael Sherman, msherman@ktsftv.com