Nielson Under Pressure?
By Peter Marra
Is the demo for iTV and Mobile the same as tradition OTA/Cable TV? Are people who watch episodic TV on their iPhones part of current Nielsen panels? Is Nielsen courting this demo, and is there any vehicle in place now or on the horizon to track usage and people place-shift content from fixed viewing experiences to a more mobile one?
Perhaps these are just a few of the questions that have the TV industry pressing Nielsen to implement Internet meters as part of their national panel as soon as possible. On October 16th in New York City, Nielsen held a meeting to get input from some of their clients and what priorities exist for on-line content viewing.
"We're hearing from the clients that the timing is right to begin a broad roll out of internet meters," said Sara Ericson, president of media client services at Nielsen who added that clients are also wary of affecting the quality of the TV panel. The fear is the more demands put on the existing panelists - such as tracking their Internet use - the greater the likelihood of them dropping out of the TV panel altogether.
In their article, Nielsen Hears From Clients on TV Everywhere Future, Broadcasting & Cable raised some important points about tracking content in the workplace as well as different agendas on the part of different media outlets.
From our perspective - Nielsen should consider
* Perhaps existing panel members would opt-out of the TV system, why not then use different people for their Internet research?
* Understanding they want a "complete picture," there would be ways to correlate that information if they really wanted to.
Besides, it's likely that you're going to see very different behaviors with households that are more accepting of, and have been faster to adopt, non-traditional methods of watching programming. The question thus becomes:
What information is more valuable: How a traditional Nielsen family watches TV vs. Internet-based content or how the "early adopters" of Hulu, iTunes, Apple TV, etc. watch both? They might be fearing that the data would support the likelihood that there's an elephant in the room: TV advertising just isn't as valuable as it once was perceived to be (and perception is a huge issue with advertising rates).
You also can't discount the fact that Nielsen has a vested financial interest in maintaining the existing panel structure. This line is telling:
The fear is the more demands put on the existing panelists - such as tracking their Internet use - the greater the likelihood of them dropping out of the TV panel altogether.
To us, the biggest reason Nielsen would fear such a "drop-out": As opposed to the virtual monopoly they have on TV ratings, their data would then be competing with the data of Comscore, Omniture, Google, etc.
Peter Marra is a streaming media and technology specialist and has worked for companies such as Farmers' Almanac and Yahoo!
