IBOPE

IBOPE (Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics -- in Portuguese, Instituto Brasileiro de Opinião Pública e Estatística) is a company that conducts research on various topics both in and outside Brazil. The IBOPE group is composed of 52 companies, employed over 2,800 people in 16 countries.

Because it is one of the largest such institutes in the field, IBOPE is employed by various companies that need such research conducted. The television network Rede Globo, for example, measures the size of its audience using statistical data generated by IBOPE. The company's name in lower case ("ibope") is synonym for "ratings".

History
IBOPE was created in 1942 by the radio broadcaster Auricélio Penteado, owner of Radio Kosmos in São Paulo. In that year, he decided to apply research methodologies he had learned while studying in the United States under George Gallup, the founder of the American Institute of Public Opinion, in order to quantify the size of the audience of his broadcast in Brazil. When he measured the radio audience in São Paulo, Auricélio proved that Radio Kosmos wasn't among the most listened to stations. Thenceforth, he would dedicate himself exclusively to research.

Measurement
In every city where the audience is measured, IBOPE choose a group of homes at random to represent the population. With the authorization of the family members, each television is equipped with a device called a peoplemeter, which identifies and records which channels are being watched. By radio (in Greater São Paulo) or by telephone (in other cities in Brazil), the device sends out information when viewers changes channels to a central collection point managed by IBOPE, which processes, analyzes, and distributes the data to clients.

The data about the audience in Greater São Paulo is transmitted over the internet to clients within one minute (in "real time"), whereas data from other cities is sent on the morning of the following day. In Fortaleza and Florianópolis viewers fill out a record notebook every week.

IBOPE measures up to four members of each household. Participants are from both genders, and must be at least four years old, and living in an urban area. They are chosen from all of the five classes listed in the Critério De Classificação Econômica Brasil ("Brazilian Economic Classification Scheme").

In addition to television audiences, IBOPE conducts surveys regarding:
 * Politics
 * Media (Magazines, Radio, Public and paid television stations, newspapers)
 * Marketing

During the early 90's IBOPE expanded its service and today is present in over 16 countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Equator, United States, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Uruguay and Venezuela).

Divisions
Among the companies within IBOPE Group there are:


 * IBOPE Intelligence: strategic analyses of facts, market trends, as well as evaluation of opportunities and risk;
 * IBOPE Media Information (IMI): services and products related to media research in Latin America. Operating in 13 countries in Latin America and with a commercial office in Miami, IMI is the largest Latin America media research company. Its structure is composed of various local and international associations. IMI currently conducts audience measurement for television (both free to air and paid), radio and internet, as well as tracking of advertising expenditure and multi media survey throughout the Latin America region.
 * IBOPE Media: media research, including audience rating of open television and cable television, radio, indices of periodical and magazine readership, as well as fact-finding regarding advertising investments.
 * IBOPE//NetRatings: audience analyses and advertisement monitoring on the Internet;
 * IBOPE Opinion: public opinion research, electoral research and governmental research;
 * IBOPE Solution: qualitative and quantitative ad-hoc market research;
 * LatinPanel: consumption research and consumer panels;
 * Medialog: automation software for advertising agencies, channels of communication and advertisers;
 * Megadata: data processing services
 * Millward Brown Brazil: understanding, evaluating and accompaniment of brands and communication;
 * MQI (Marketing Quality Information): infrastructure and technology to attend to the demands of large volumes of information by means of the telephone.