Recital 44d

In order to improve their services, providers of online services should be able to gain information about the use of their service on an aggregated level without analysing individual subscriber or user behaviour. To enable this, measuring the audience of an online service by creating anonymous aggregated information about the usage of an online service, where it is carried out by the provider of that online service, or by a provider acting on their behalf should not require consent. The aggregated data used for such measurement should not relate to a specific data subject and should therefore be anonymous. Data of users or subscribers used for this purpose should not be further processed for another purpose nor combined with data from other services from the provider of the online service or from a third party, such as analytics information from other websites. The aggregated information could be shared with third parties, including companies and non-commercial organizations. In addition, Regulation (EU) 2024/1083 emphasises the importance of audience measurement for evaluating the performance of media content and understanding the preferences of audiences in order to plan the future production of content, as well as for its important function in fostering transparency and verifiability of audiences. Such measurement should be in principle carried out in accordance with widely accepted industry self-regulatory mechanisms, such as joint industry committees, and is often conducted by independent entities acting as joint controllers. Thus, measuring audiences of media content by collecting data about the number and characteristics of viewers of the media content on the website of the provider or on online platforms should be possible without consent, provided that data collected are not further processed for another purpose, are immediately pseudonymised and that audience measurement reports generated do not contain personal data. Exempting such measurement from the consent requirement should contribute to the sustainability of the media ecosystem as highlighted in Regulation (EU) 2024/1083. The limitations should ensure that the personal data collected is not reused for providing personalised advertising, profiling or other unrelated purposes.