AGB Nielsen Media Research today can definitely claim to be a global company but we would prefer to be seen as a global leader in terms of TAM, in that we are in a position to offer unique benefits to our clients and to the TAM industry as a whole.

We know that there is fragmentation in terms of TAM systems in a number of countries, even though the Global Guidelines for Television Audience Measurement (the GGTAM) publication has tried to establish a set of harmonisation rules. In fact even the existence of what might appear to be a standardised way of measuring television audiences, namely the peoplemeter, often does not result in comparable measures of television audiences. Far more important are the methodologies, procedures and technical capabilities of the TAM provider in validating a peoplemeter service.

AGB Nielsen Media Research should provide a strong guarantee for the TAM industry as a whole, as not only does each operation following the GGTAM guidelines but they also all implement a standardised approach in terms of research methodology and proprietary TAM technology.

The global position of AGB Nielsen Media Research was not achieved overnight, in one shot. Instead this global coverage has been gained over the years, on a country by country level; challenging our competitors and being chosen as the preferred TAM supplier based on factual grounds. We are therefore more than comfortable in saying, that this global position that we enjoy today has been achieved through customer satisfaction.

The formula to our continual success is our clear understanding that it is essential that we continue to behave, as we have done in the past, like a local entity tailoring our standardised TAM operations to each market's needs. For this reason our clients can be assured that we will never abuse our global position. Instead our clients will benefit from the cross fertilisation of our experience gained at the local level and our global TAM knowledge, which we leverage into the R & D of our standardised proprietary TAM system. These developments are available to all our operations, ensuring that we offer our clients state of the art solutions, that have been tried and tested in other markets.

In fact given our international position and the AGB Nielsen Media Research methodology 'blueprints' we can establish global standards in terms of statistical procedures and sample design, the definition of viewership, the sample maintenance and panel rotation.

Our extensive field and panel management experience, in a wide range of economic and culturally different TAM environments, allows us to leverage this diverse experience into the research and development of our state of the art TAM system tools.

Our global growth has also enabled us to have the financial resources available to fund these continued investments.

Given the harmonisation of our global operations in terms of methodologies, procedures and technology we are in a unique position to provide our clients and our quality control departments, with international benchmark comparisons in terms of KPI's such as in tab targets, editing rules and weighting procedures.

Obviously each operation is tailored to the local needs but if standards can be set and full documentation is provided, similar if not homogenous regional data should result in truly comparable databases. This regional harmonisation has further implications for the development of a standardised analysis software, such as Arianna, whose development needs in terms of regional tailoring, can be shared among the regional clients.

Given the need for reliable and comparable data, transparency of every area within the TAM data production is a given for AGB Nielsen Media Research. We would go so far as to say that without this transparency there can never be the guarantee to be providing the Users with an unquestionable currency. This transparency needs to be inclusive of all the area of the TAM data production together with the rigorous quality controls carried out for each stage within the process. Pollux, the production software used in all of our operation is our guarantee of quality and for the users the complete assurance of the integrity of the system.

In fact this transparency and our standardised approach enables the Corporate Support Centre's quality control team to effectively monitor each operation's performance, on a weekly basis, ensuring that any exceptions are easily investigated and their source is quickly and efficiently identified and solved.

The full documentation of the production flow of all our TAM operations also ensures that not only are our clients continuously informed about the performance of the ratings service but their chosen independent auditor has complete access to all historical information, including the Establishment survey research, panel management, data collection and processing procedures.

Finally, our ability to 'cross fertilise' our local TAM experiences within our global operations should be appreciated. This asset which to a large degree is unique to AGB Nielsen Media Research, in that we have a standardised proprietary TAM system, can often be an accelerator in terms of upgrading our global TAM operations. A real example has been our exportable solution for measuring digital platforms without the need for any broadcaster cooperation. Learning to do this in an advanced TAM environment has enabled us to easily upgrade other operations, often anticipating our clients' needs.