The two companies are using TiVo’s Power Watch sample as a base – 35,000 owners of TiVo’s digital video recorders, who have opted-in to have their TV viewing habits tracked.

Web measurement firm Quantcast will use its page tagging technology to identify these customers when they venture online to specific sites, such as TiVo’s homepage.

All data will be collected anonymously, though advertisers and media owners will be able to carry out demographic segmentations on the combined TV and web data.

TiVo’s head of audience research and measurement services Todd Juenger said: “Most brands invest in both internet and television advertising, and often the campaigns are designed to reinforce each other from a creative standpoint, but the audiences of these advertising impressions have been measured separately and independently. There was no scalable tool to directly link the two.

“Similarly, television networks can measure traditional TV audiences and separately measure online video audiences, but have no way of measuring the overlap,” he said. “That ends today.”

Nielsen, the currency TV ratings provider in the US market, does operate a ‘convergence panel’ tracking television and internet usage in the same homes, though only 1,000 households are members.