DISH Network and Rentrak Announce Television Audience Measurement Agreement

Monday, February 8th, 2010
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Rentrak First to Offer Measurement from National Database of 15 Million TV Sets — The Most Comprehensive View of TV in the U.S.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Rentrak Corporation (Nasdaq: RENT), the leader in multi-screen media measurement serving the advertising and entertainment industries, today announced an industry-advancing agreement with DISH Network L.L.C. (NASDAQ: DISH) to commercially integrate DISH Network’s TV viewing data with Rentrak’s TV Essentials audience measurement service. Contributing the largest national TV viewing data set, DISH Network provides Rentrak the ability to become the only company to offer media measurement in all 210 TV markets, with more than 15 million televisions nationwide when combined with telco TV and cable viewing information.

“Rentrak’s TV Essentials product, fueled by DISH Network’s comprehensive set-top box data, is the most meaningful and credible viewer measurement offering, and will positively influence the future of television and advanced advertising,” said Michael Kelly, executive vice president of Direct, Commercial and Advertising Sales for DISH Network. “DISH Network continues to lead the development of innovative products and solutions that appeal to viewers and advertisers, including high engagement interactive television, niche and custom network viewership, and the ability to present the most relevant commercial content to viewers on a geographic or psychographic basis.”

“With the addition of DISH Network to TV Essentials’ databases, Rentrak has fulfilled its vision of providing a national footprint as a foundation to overlay advertisers’ definition of their customers to detailed TV viewing from digital set devices. Rentrak can now provide the only fully-integrated system of detailed satellite, telco TV and cable viewing information from more than 15 million televisions nationwide that can help increase the effectiveness and efficiency of national and local television advertising campaigns,” said Bill Livek, CEO of Rentrak. “With this massive national data set comprised of anonymous, second-by-second viewing information (including live and time-shifted DVR click-stream viewing), TV Essentials is the only fully integrated service that can merge advertisers’ segmentation systems and their proprietary customer definitions to provide, for the first time, the power of direct marketing tools to television media buying.”

The partnership of DISH Network and Rentrak has produced the most comprehensive measurement system for television viewing, with the highest quality and precision in the history of media. Rentrak’s powerhouse processing capability enables its media partners to truly understand their business.

About TV Essentials

Rentrak’s TV Essentials is a comprehensive suite of research tools that enable customers to analyze anonymous audience viewing of programming and advertising across VOD, DVR, interactive and linear television. Utilizing proprietary technology to process massive amounts of click-stream data, the TV Essentials system is able to aggregate and report second-by-second information from millions of digital set-top boxes. The system can isolate individual market, network, series, or telecast performance, administer national and local estimates, and provide an evaluation of influencing factors such as psychographics and demographics.