A simple and effective mechanism is shown to determine and utilize information about idle user equipment which received MBMS services for purposes of audience monitoring. The implementation can be done by defining a new information element (IE) for a proposed MBMS status information and embedding the new IE into a UE-originated message of a network control signaling procedure, e.g., RRC Connection Request which may be sent at the convenience of the UE when it transitions from the idle state to the active state for its own purposes, i.e., purposes primarily other than audience monitoring.