(70)Relevant market players have traditionally agreed upon a set of measurement methodologies in order to carry out audience measurement in a transparent and reliable manner and develop impartial and trusted benchmarks to be used when assessing the performance of media and advertising content. Those measurement methodologies are either reflected in relevant industry standards and best practices or are organised and consolidated by self-regulatory bodies, such as the Joint Industry Committees, which are established in several Member States and bring together all the key stakeholders operating in the media and advertising industry. In order to enhance the verifiability, reliability and comparability of audience measurement methodologies, in particular online, transparency obligations should be laid down for providers of proprietary audience measurement systems that do not follow the relevant industry standards and best practices or do not abide by the industry benchmarks agreed within the relevant self-regulatory bodies. Under those obligations, such actors, where requested and to the extent possible, should provide advertisers and media service providers or parties acting on their behalf with information describing the methodologies employed for the measurement of the audience. Such information could consist in providing elements such as the size of the sample measured, the definition of the indicators that are measured, the metrics, the measurement methods, the measurement period, the coverage of measurement and the margin of error. To ensure an adequate level of effectiveness of those transparency obligations and to foster the trustworthiness of proprietary audience measurement systems, the methodologies and the way in which they are applied should be subject to independent audits on a yearly basis. Furthermore, in order to help achieve a level playing field and foster the clarity and contestability of the relevant information that is provided to the market, it is also key that the audience measurement results be made available. For that reason, media service providers should be able to request providers of proprietary audience measurement systems to provide information on the audience measurement results concerning their own media content and services. In particular, providers of proprietary audience measurement systems should ensure that that information is provided in an industry-standard form, includes the relevant non-aggregated data, is of high quality and is detailed enough to allow the requesting media service providers to carry out an effective and meaningful assessment of the reach and performance of their media content and services. The need to increase the transparency and contestability of proprietary audience measurement systems should be reconciled with the freedom of providers of audience measurement systems to develop their own measurement systems as part of their freedom to conduct business. In particular, the transparency obligations imposed on providers of audience measurement systems by this Regulation should be without prejudice to the protection of the trade secrets of providers of audience measurement systems as defined in Directive (EU) 2016/943 of the European Parliament and of the Councilnote. The obligations imposed by this Regulation should also be without prejudice to any obligations that apply to providers of audience measurement systems under Regulation (EU) 2019/1150 or Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Councilnote, including those concerning ranking, self-preferencing or providing access to performance measuring tools and the relevant data.
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