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See the Whole World of Television in High Definition
The ARF DASH TV Universe Study paints a comprehensive picture of the US consumer television landscape. DASH records, in granular detail, how consumers connect to and consume TV across platforms, devices and services. Subscribers use DASH to calibrate viewership data, project audiences, sharpen demographics, assess strategy and tell better sales stories, among other applications.
DASH is conducted in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago, a premier polling firm, and overseen by a technical committee of experts from each licensee.
Launched in 2021 and accredited by the Media Rating Council (MRC) in 2026, DASH has become an industry standard for TV universe estimation.
DASH employs a national probability sample to produce reliable projections in total US context. DASH also enables definition and profiling of TV consumers on hundreds of demographic and usage characteristics.
Fielded annually in two waves, DASH produces timely, respondent-level data that supports rigorous tracking of key measures and analysis of consumer switching. The survey maintains a reliable core for trending but is updated each wave to reflect the dynamics of the market and address the data needs of licensees. Modules in DASH delve deeply into hot topics, including ad-supported streaming, out-of-home viewing and retail media networks.
The ARF releases two, rolling 12-month DASH data sets a year, and we offer cost-efficient licenses in three tiers to ARF members and non-members alike.
Through a collaboration with Experian, DASH-defined audience segments are available on a CPM basis on many ad platforms, allowing advertisers to align campaigns easily with consumers’ media usage habits. DASH data can be mapped to any ID graph to enable licensees to produce custom ad targets.
To learn more or subscribe, click on the link below or email us at DASH@thearf.org.
Reconnect Connected TV
CTV has enhanced the consumer experience but created massive complexity.
Most everyone subscribes to multiple services, watches on mobile devices and TV sets, connects to more than one TV signal, and shares streaming accounts with family and friends, making a clear picture of consumption very hard to come by. 
At the same time, viewership data from Smart TV sets and set-top boxes, and first-party data from networks and advertisers, have fragmented audience measurement and delivery.
Practitioners in every corner of the industry, from measurement to programming to ad planning and sales, need to understand the pieces and put them together in useful ways.
A comprehensive view of the total universe is essential — but the view of each provider is limited by its footprint and data sources. Some companies conduct their own studies or mash together disparate datasets, but those approaches can be expensive and discourage collaboration.
Knitting the pieces together coherently, credibly and efficiently requires a reliable and accepted standard for universe estimation. That standard is DASH.
To learn more or subscribe, click on the link below or email us at DASH@thearf.org.
Learn How We Do It
The ARF partners with NORC at the University of Chicago to develop the DASH survey and conduct the 
fieldwork each year against a national probability sample of 10,000 persons, age 18+. The sample includes a large, longitudinal sub-sample of respondents who took the DASH survey in previous, consecutive years.
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 captures hundreds of individual- and household-level data points from each respondent. The elements in the purple tiles represent the core of the TV study. The elements in green create context and support cross-media usage.
Broad coverage and granularity make DASH a uniquely robust source of truth. For example, 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.
To learn more or subscribe, click on the link below or email us at DASH@thearf.org.
Access DASH Your Way
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 the 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.