Quick answers to commonly asked questions about VOZ.

Virtual Australia, or ‘VOZ’, is the foundation of Australia’s new Total TV reporting standard.

VOZ brings together broadcaster content viewed on TV sets (OzTAM and Regional TAM TV ratings) and connected devices (OzTAM’s VPM service, which captures online-delivered TV content, or ‘BVOD’) in a single detailed database. Conceived and developed by OzTAM, Regional TAM and Nielsen, VOZ provides all-screen, cross-platform planning and reporting for Australia’s television industry.

OzTAM, Regional TAM and Nielsen have designed a database to represent the Australian population, a ‘Virtual Australia’.

The Television Audience Measurement (TAM) Service uses a robust and large-scale Establishment Survey that collects data from 65,000+ interviews each year about respondents’ homes, TV viewing technologies and the demographics of their household members. In combination with Australian Bureau of Statistics official population data, the VOZ database is constructed to contain 26 million synthesised ‘individuals’ to represent the profile of all Australians.

Australian TV viewing patterns are changing, thanks to the explosion in content, platform and device choice. The average Australian home now has 1.8 TV sets but 6.6 screens in total, and people are using all of them to watch television throughout the day – inside and outside the home. A small but growing number of people do not have access to a TV set, yet they stream broadcast content online. OzTAM, Regional TAM and Nielsen have built VOZ to capture the TV viewing that takes place on all screens.

VOZ captures ‘Total TV’, that is: viewing of Metropolitan, Regional and Subscription TV broadcasters’ (linear) TV content (whether viewed live or played back through the TV set up to 28 days of original broadcast) and also internet-delivered BVOD services. Participating BVOD broadcasters: ABC, Seven Network, Nine Network, Network 10, SBS and Foxtel.