Is this a healthy development or just the fox (and ABC, NBC etc) guarding the henhouse?
TV Week
TV By The Numbers.
TV Week
In what looks like a major challenge to the stanglehold Nielsen Media Research has on the currency controlling the spending of billions of dollars on TV, some of the nation's biggest advertisers, media agencies and networks--broadcast and cable --have formed a consortium to get better measurement of TV and digital video viewing
TV By The Numbers.
Deadline Hollywood DailyThe news about some big media television networks and advertisers putting together a consortium to challenge the Nielsen ratings system raises a lot of questions.
What’s really behind this? Does it really have much to do with measurement? Or is it more about a business landscape that’s changing at an ever accelerating pace?
The TV networks believe more people are watching their shows than wind up getting counted by the current Nielsen measurements because they only capture television viewing and not online viewing.
The advertisers want as much data as possible to make their ad buys, but also don’t want to pay for things like DVR viewing since most people fast-forward through most of the ads most of the time.
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Nielsen is not perfect or blameless here. But its biggest sin is probably that it’s too good of a sales organization. Good sales organizations don’t tell their biggest customers (the networks), “Look, you don’t really have a measurement issue, you have an issue with a changing business landscape. That’s really not our deal. We’ll measure whatever you want if you’re willing to pay for it, but if advertisers don’t want to pay for DVR viewers, that’s your problem, not ours.”
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Nielsen tried to broker an uneasy truce between networks and advertisers with the C3 ratings. But it looks like that didn’t work out for the networks because too many people fast forward too much of the time. Those aren’t ad dollars you can recover through better measurement.
C'mon, these are the kind of con men who, if you ask them what time it is, you still have to check your watch. And at the same time make sure they're not pickpocketing your wallet. They've always been adept at manipulating numbers. (Ain't that right, all you net profit participants?) And don't even get me started on the fact this is yet another example of these supposed competitors forming a cartel.
According to the Financial Times, the Big Media networks have roped in top advertisers like Procter & Gamble and AT&T and Unilever into their scheme. "The involvement of such big names highlights how urgently advertisers feel the need for better information to justify ads that run across multiple media platforms," the FT writes, noting that media agencies GroupM, owned by WPP, and Starcom MediaVest are also joining. "People briefed on the plans expected the consortium to award contracts for measuring set-top box data and cross-platform viewers across TV and digital sources as early as the 4th quarter of this year."