Auditel beyond TV: cinema adverts and on-demand radio in the new project

With Audiradio, on the other hand, the Auditel group is seeking a solution to recognise and measure time-shifted, on-demand viewing. The approach relies on audio recognition technologies that have already been in use for years in television. The programme continues to exist after it has been broadcast: the measurement system must be able to track it.

Part of this shared infrastructure is already up and running. For the past two years, Audicom has been relying on Auditel’s technical infrastructure to produce reports on Serie A matches and to publish and distribute DAZN’s viewing figures to the market. Furthermore, the roll-out of the audience measurement technology already used by Auditel across the digital platforms of the Audicom ecosystem is nearing completion. This integration is set to feed into Audicom Census, whilst the collaboration also covers advertising data and viewing figures on connected TVs.

But more tools and more data are not enough. Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi, chairman of Auditel, highlights the risk: mistaking the proliferation of digital traces for an increase in viewership. ‘A device is not a person; a impression is not always an engagement; a sum of contacts does not automatically equate to an audience. Many proprietary data sets, collected according to different criteria, do not constitute a common truth.’

To illustrate this change, Sassoli retires ‘the housewife from Voghera’ and introduces ‘Anna degli Schermi’: she watches a programme on the television, records it on her mobile, and perhaps finishes watching it on her computer. She leaves different traces, but remains the same person. The task of the investigation is to piece together that journey, avoiding duplication and respecting privacy.

The scale of this phenomenon is particularly evident from a figure in the Sensemakers analysis: in May 2026, connected TV reached 35.4 million people in Italia each month, representing 65.3 per cent of the television-watching population. The television is becoming a gateway to a variety of content. And the battle for viewers now spans all screens.

For advertisers, Sassoli argues, the promise of advanced television is only of value if one knows exactly who is actually being reached, the frequency of exposure and the additional reach achieved by switching from one screen to another. “Technological sophistication must lead to greater transparency, not further opacity.”

It is here that the technological expansion described by Lugiato meets the president’s request: to make comparable what today risks remaining fragmented. With a warning to the market: ‘If television moves forward and research lags behind, we end up measuring a world that no longer exists.’

“People choose content, a screen and a moment,” said Upa chairman Marco Travaglia, who went on to highlight the recent expansion of Audicom’s governance structure with the arrival of new member Anitec-Assinform, representing Google, Amazon, Netflix and Disney. “Today,” he added, “we can say that the market has moved up a gear.”