Audience Measurement and Media Fragmentation: Revisiting the Monopoly Question

Many studies have examined contests between audience measurement systems in media markets. These suggest that the audience measurement industry is a natural monopoly. This study revisits the question with a novel approach by investigating a market at a time when two measurement services provided data. Executives were interviewed in the Indian television market on how they used information available from two competing ratings services. Although market participants recognized only one system (TAM, which provided weekly ratings) as the currency for trading advertising time, many used the second system (aMAP, an overnight ratings service) selectively for improving network performance. Therefore, fragmented markets can support multiple systems if they serve distinct institutional interests.