TV programmers frustrated that shows watched on tablets and smartphones have been invisible to Nielsen’s ratings may finally get a solution — next year.
Next week, Nielsen will formally announce to clients a timetable for a long-awaited development: In September 2014, the firm is aiming to be able to attribute linear TV viewed on smartphones and tablets to its National TV ratings.
The approach, the culmination of more than three years of work, will for the first time provide a single, consistent measure of live programming viewing across both TV and digital, according to the firm. That could solve a problem that has vexed TV nets and marketers: Today, there’s no satisfactory way to harmonize data about video content and advertising viewed on TV, online, mobile and other platforms.
Source: Variety
Next week, Nielsen will formally announce to clients a timetable for a long-awaited development: In September 2014, the firm is aiming to be able to attribute linear TV viewed on smartphones and tablets to its National TV ratings.
The approach, the culmination of more than three years of work, will for the first time provide a single, consistent measure of live programming viewing across both TV and digital, according to the firm. That could solve a problem that has vexed TV nets and marketers: Today, there’s no satisfactory way to harmonize data about video content and advertising viewed on TV, online, mobile and other platforms.
Source: Variety
But still limited to Nielson households, correct? I'm sorry but I'll never believe their little mathematical formula is very accurate. Le sigh.
ReplyDeletethis is the n+1 reiteration of this development from Nielsen and yet I don't see the importance, beside the happy squeals of frustrated fans.
ReplyDelete- Nilesen meters the TV shows for the advertisers, to know how many people watches their ads - not to meter how many people watches the show.
- most of the downloaded shows (like from iTunes and Amazon) don't have ads, so its insignificant to the advertisers. Plus channels get their share from each download, so they don't need Nilesen's estimation, they have hard cash numbers of those viewers.
- the digital distributions which contains ads are either the channels own websites or providers like Hulu - which is again in a financial tie with the channels. Saying that eg. ABC needs Nielsen to know (more precisely: estimate) how many people watches an episode from their own server, means that they are complete idiots, unable to use their own in-house data.
I agree, that better knowing the non-traditional viewing habits are very important to find new methods of financing the traditional production of the TV shows. Eg. if there a downloaded episode is watched ten times, a product placement in it is ten times more effective than if the episode can be watched only on air. But this has nothing to do with the ratings, because those are especially about the estimation of the watched ads.
I've said it for years the Nielson ratings system is not an accurate representation of the number of viewers a TV show gets.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see they are making improvements and changes, but can't we just get rid of the Nielsen system entirely? In my perfect world, each network have a streaming service; the free one lets you watch all you want, but with regular commercial breaks just like the ones on TV, maybe even ads specifically tailored for your country/region. Then, in the Premium package, you get no breaks or interruptions whatsoever, but you do pay a monthly price for the package. If this was initiated on a global basis, wouldn't they make even more money than they are currently making? Why is this so hard to put in motion?
ReplyDeleteNielsen's importance is greatly exaggerated. And they know it. You know they know it. Now we just need to realize that we don't need them so they can disappear. It's like that episode of Buffy where she told the Watcher's Council to eff off.
ReplyDeleteAs I said above, Nilesen doesn't care about the numbers of viewers a TV show gets. They are caring about the viewers who watch the ads in a certain time on a certain channel. Whether their measuring method of those channels are proper to this goal or not it is another question.
ReplyDeleteIMHO as the methods are clearly defined and aren't a secret plus there are quite a number of people both at the channels and at the advertisers who knows a thing or two about statistical probability theory, I assume that both parties know the accuracy of Nielsen's data and make their decision in the light of that.