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Access a Rigorous and Independent TV Universe Study
The ARF DASH TV Universe Study paints a comprehensive picture of the consumer television landscape. DASH records, in granular detail, how US consumers connect to and consume TV, including their use of digital devices and streaming services. DASH employs a national probability sample to produce reliable values and modeling signals useful in measurement, identity, and media planning and sales.
Launched in 2021, DASH has become an industry standard for TV penetration and usage data. DASH is conducted annually in two waves. Each survey is updated to reflect the market and to address the data needs of licensees. In the past two years, for example, modules have been added to the study to delve more deeply into ad-supported streaming, out-of-home viewing dynamics and retail media networks.
In 2024, DASH underwent a successful pre-audit for MRC accreditation. The full audit should be completed this year.
The ARF offers DASH licenses to ARF members and non-members alike. Subscribers have access to the respondent-level data set for estimating universes, correcting biases in viewership data, modeling variables, and assigning impressions, accounts and devices to individuals and households, among many applications.
In addition, through a collaboration with Experian, DASH-defined audience segments are available on a CPM basis on many ad platforms. These segments allow advertisers to align campaigns with consumers’ media usage habits.
To learn more or subscribe, contact Jim Meyer, General Manager, or Paul Donato, ARF Chief Research Officer, at DASH@thearf.org or by clicking the link below.
Industry Leaders Explain the Benefits of the DASH Study
Calibrate Your Data to the Market Standard
With Connected TV has come fragmentation and massive complexity, presenting unprecedented challenges for industry experts who need a precise understanding of usage at the household and persons levels. Consumers are awash in options. Most everyone subscribes to multiple TV services, shares devices and accounts with family and friends, and, at least occasionally, watches TV with others. 
At the same time, streaming viewership data from Smart TV sets and set-top boxes, and first-party data from networks and advertisers have opened up new modes of TV measurement and audience delivery.
Complicating things further, each provider’s view of usage is limited to its own “footprint” or relationships. Some companies conduct their own universe studies or piece together disparate datasets, but those approaches can be expensive and produce results with limited value. To knit the pieces together coherently, credibly and efficiently, companies need a reliable calibration standard. That standard is DASH.
See the Full Picture in Color
The ARF partners with NORC at the University of Chicago to develop the DASH survey and conduct the 
fieldwork against a national probability sample of 10,000+ persons, age 18 and older. NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel forms the backbone of the sample plan. Panel registrations provide respondent and household demographics. Interviews are conducted online, in person and by phone, and NORC’s rigorous processes and audit procedures ensure high-quality response data. A technical committee made up of experts from DASH licensees consults on study design ahead of each wave.
DASH gathers data on every TV set: brand, room location, age, “smartness,” and connection devices and modes. DASH even records TV connections in households with no TV set. DASH captures ISPs and TV services in use, including MVPDs and vMVPDs, streamers (both ad-supported and premium) and FASTs. DASH itemizes person-level ownership and usage of video-capable mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets and laptops, enabling production of a robust device graph. DASH collects measures of respondents’ viewing and co-viewing across dayparts, devices and services, to generate rich modeling signals. And modules on shopping and retail media networks, streaming audio, social media, email and apps create a holistic view.
Get Timely Data Releases
Each full year DASH study is released to licensees in January. An interim release, comprising results of the Spring wave, drops in September, coincident with the start of the Fall wave. Full year results from DASH 2021 through 2024 are available now.
Subscribe to DASH
The ARF offers annual licenses to DASH data in three tiers, starting at $80,000, a small fraction of the cost of conducting a similar study on your own:
- Basic offers summary-level data in Tableau and web dashboards for strategic analyses, panel weighting, modeling household topographies and planning and packaging media.
- Plus adds a non-matchable, anonymized, respondent-level database for custom segmentation, profiling and analysis.
- Premium adds a privacy-compliant, respondent-level database that can be matched to the licensee’s census-level viewership or consumer database, using a third-party integrator. Experian, the ARF’s integration partner for this study, has developed a turn-key integration protocol and offers its service to Premium licensees.
DASH licensees enjoy unlimited access to the data. There are no per-seat or usage charges. DASH data and documentation are delivered to licensees through a secure portal. Users subscribing to multiple, consecutive years also get access to a longitudinal data set of repeat respondents for analysis of switching dynamics.
To learn more or subscribe, contact Jim Meyer, DASH General Manager, or Paul Donato, ARF Chief Research Officer, at DASH@thearf.org or by clicking the link below.