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Nielsen Adapting To Modern TV-Watching
Ant wrote to mention a C|Net story discussing fundamental changes in how the Nielsen company tracks viewership. From the article: "CNET says that the Nielsen company is finally taking one of several steps aimed at adapting to the new television/TV audience (those who use TiVo or another service to record prime time shows for viewing later) on December 26th, 2005. Ratings will be broken out by how shows are watched--live, later in the day or within a seven-day period. Over time, Nielsen will also move to measure viewing that takes place via iPods, cellular/cell phones, laptops, and other digital devices that are gaining TV privileges. The company also will track audiences for on-demand fare. The steps are a radical change for Nielsen, reflecting an overall paradigm shift that's shaking up the television world. The audience is taking control. And TV companies are scrambling to catch up."
I wonder if Nielsen will start monitoring BitTorrent trackers (not to bust people, but simply to measure popularity.)
I remember at one point, between the top two torrents of LOST, there were 5,000-10,000 seeders, 10-15k completes, and 20-30k people leeching within the first 12-24 hours.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
How do they plan to monitor what is played on iPods? Sounds kind of intrusive to me....
Also, -50 points for use of the phrase 'paradigm shift.'
And the only thing they didn't know about my tv watching was exactly what I was watching if I was just playing a tape. But they sure knew which programs I had recorded for later viewing. It was one of the many subjects that came up during the orientation.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Hooray! I've been one of the new Nielsen TiVo households for about a year now and I'm thrilled to see them finally starting to break things out this way. The best part is it's easy, I don't have to do anything different, they just collect the data from TiVo. Finally shows like Mythbusters, Iron Chef, etc., might finally get some respect!
TV pirates are people too.
Imagine what would happen if ISPs started supporting IP multicast. It would allow media content to be distributed MUCH more easily. I recall someone claiming that BitTorrent was now consisting of 25-50% of Internet backbone traffic - Imagine how much that could be reduced if multicast were used, given that probably 90% of that 25-50% are duplicate packets, if not more.
Unfortunately, we may not ever see IP multicast in its present form on the backbone. It requires too much additional memory in routers, and I have yet to see ANY information on how to find a free multicast address and reserve it for use. It's simply too hard for the average programmer/user to use.
I saw a couple of links to a Japanese multicast project known as Xcast, which would simply put multiple destination IP addresses in a packet, while it isn't as scalable as IP multicast, it's a hell of a lot easier to use. Unfortunately, since it isn't quite standardized yet, it's basically only supported on a handful of test networks, and I wouldn't be surprised if it stays that way.
In this day and age of mass media distribution, some form of multicast, even a limited one that only allows 8-16 destinations per packet, is desperately needed - so why the hell is there still no viable solution?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I always doubted the reliability of Nielsen ratings, especially given the cancellation of so many great shows (e.g. Family Guy.. for awhile anyway). Moreover, I have never, ever known anyone who's been in a so-called "Nielsen family". I guess my friends and I aren't average enough to make it into the sampling demographic.
One reason advertisers loved the web (at first, at least) was because it's possible to get exact numbers of "viewers", know what viewers are doing (clicking through, clicking then ordering, etc.), and not miss any viewers simply because they didn't get lucky enough to be sampled. I can't imagine being an advertiser trying to track my television ad results... what, survey everyone who walks in my store?
Still no wat for them to track my TV usage on my PC? I use my AIM Radeon quite often.
-bZj
.sig
These steps won't change the television companies' opinions on these new methods of watching TV, because their main use of these ratings has been to determimine how much they can charge for advertisisng time. A lot of PVR recordings can fast forward commercials, TV shows for ipods that Apple sells have no ads and anything downloaded via Bittorrent skips the ads. When consumers take control, first on their agenda is getting rid of ads, I'd daresay moreso than mere timeshifting. Considering that these networks enjoy lavish profits because of advertising, now that official ratings acknowledge these ad-less forms of viewership their ad time is likely to diminish in price.
This could lead the broadcasters stepping up their rather obnoxious practice of putting advertising around the edges of the screen during programming, as bittorrent downloaded shows can't get around that.
God I HATE advertising... It's killing television (not hard, but still...)
Yup...
Good. Maybe, just maybe this will help end the new era of TV stations stretching their shows one (or like Cold Case, several) minutes later than their scheduled run time. I swear they started runing these long to screw with TiVos and VCRs.
{ - Generic Guy - }
With respect to television usage, which is pretty much just ambient/background news stream, and not internet usage, I've wanted for the longest time for my provider to track not just my "usage" (customer watched show X on channel Y at time Z), but my NON-usage (customer was watching show X on channel Y and CHANGED channels at time Z, and returned or did not return).
... the word? Itches. Yes, yes it does.
Why? So they can match that with my desire to avoid StupidShit (tm). At times I'll bounce from CNN to Fox to MSNBC to Bloomberg when the same stupid commercial is played for the ninth time that hour.
Heh, " To confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image:"
Also, I hope they take into account that most people who have videos on their iPods will overwhelmingly be well-off white people. I'm sure they're a valuable population statistic, but please don't let their viewing habits have too much weight in the overall viewing summary. I don't want every network to be (more) stacked with Dharma and Greg clones...
Nielsen is shit. They are the monopoly of the media research measurement systems which almost every media organization subscribes to. I can't wait until someone puts these guys out of business. Their methodology is seriously flawed (extremely low sample sizes determine what is going to be on television the next season). I would even be happy if Microsoft would put them out of business! Seriously.
When you are pissed that your favorite show was cancelled BLAME NIELSEN! Their piss poor measurement systems (some are still paper survey based) and LOW sampling methodologies ruin it for everyone.
I know I work with Nielsen data every day. It's hillarious what this company gets away with. If you don't believe me try to get into contact with them and watch how much money they ask from you before they even begin to talk. I loathe Nielsen. I am waiting for an anonymous all digital measurement system which uses the Set Top Box. At least then as a male viewer I will never get to see Tampon commercials anymore.
I work for a company that for years subscribed to AC Nielson's services but have now elected to use another service. Their product no longer served our needs and, they were expensive. I suspect that my company was far from alone in this move. The ratings system did not seem to be tracking our advertising as accurately as it once had. I'm just a geek and am not privy to the detailed information but apparently there used to be a direct relationship between Nielson's ratings and the way our advertising converted directly in to increased sales. This is (or was) no longer true and we hired another consulting company to provide us with better information.
My guess is that Nielson was missing the TVIO crowd and recorder crowd entirely. This made their product less accurate and less valuable to their customers. This cost them customers (who pay dearly for their services).
Advertising has changed a great deal in the past few years although few of us realize it. With most US households having access to cable and the internet these mediums have had an enormous impact and, broadcast TV, radio, and print have suffered. Most of us spend more time on the internet and watching cable than we do reading rags or watching the major networks!
Think about it, I'll bet right now your TV is either off or on a cable station and I know darned well if you are reading this, you are on the internet.
I don't know a great deal about the mechanics of advertising but I'll bet that cable is the big winner. It seems to me that most internet ads are considered a "pain" and largely ignored by people and that the cable ads have a more captive audience that obviously has disposable income (or they wouldn't have cable).
One of my employees is a Nielsen viewer. I can't believe those guys are still going to keep ticking.
With video watching moving towards an on-demand basis, will advertisers really need to hire a company to track viewer preferences? The best thing advertisers can do is replac Tivo/MCE/Myth/whatever with completely free tuner/PVR units. Tivo can already tell advertisers what commercials were watched or skipped, what parts of a TV show were paused or reviewed, what channels are bounced between most often, etc. As TV becomes quickly available through iTunes or direct download, IPTV, and other "right now" provisions, we'll see our information traded in exchange for free TV.
I still believe that TV show production companies will find ways to offer advertising and spyware-free shows (a la the DVD format) for those willing to pay extra. Remember, advertising only exists for shows that are being watched in real time. Video taping, downloading, PVR, whatever means ads will likely be skipped or deleted altogether. We will definitely see more product placement as well as more pop-up advertising on top of TV shows as time goes on. Technology is quickly destroying the efficacy of advertising, so advertising will either have to morph or be left in the dust.
Nielsen, IMHO, is already being put into the incinerator. Their services were nice (*pat on head*) but its time for the new kid to play.
When I was just a little kid and I thought that just by tuning in to a show I would be increasing their ratings. Ah, the innocence/ignorance of youth... Please tell me I wasn't the only one!!
End transmission.
For those unaware, Nielsen has been allowing people to sign up directly on their TiVo's for a while now.
Can we please restrain ourselves from ridiculously superficial overgeneralizations in articles? The article submission was great until the last sentences... "The audience is taking control. And TV companies are scrambling to catch up." In addition to being gramatically incorrect, is both inaccurate and perjurative to the whole submission, ruining what should have been a pretty interesting intro to an article about a shift in Nielsen's ratings, which is pretty interesting and somewhat important stuff. Is the audience really taking control? Because we can time-shift? We can do that with VCRs. Because we can do things with live television? Kind of, but, again, you could do something similar with a VCR. Are the TV companies scrambling to catch up? Nielsen is changing their methodology because these gadgets are leading to UNDER-reporting of audiences, so doesn't that indicate that they're not doing so badly after all?
There's been a rash of this lately, too... The online dictionary and "finally someone realizes that language evolves" is another egregious and recent one. If you want to comment on the story, comment in the comments. Just report the story in the submission. Saves us from reading something that is often stupid and taints the whole discussion from the get-go.
I wish Nielson could figure out that pre-announcing the date of US sweeps week ruins TV viewing. For one week out of the year every channel simultaneously has great programming. Then for the other fifty one weeks it sucks. Advertisers are stupid for believing that sweeps week is at all representative of viewing patterns. Imagine how advertising rates would have been set if 9/11 had happened during sweeps week - cable news would have had top share.
Nielsen should have been doing this ages ago. It's a wonder that TiVo hasn't yet figured out a way to put them out of business.
Earlier this year I was invited to become a Nielsen viewer (in Canada). The first problem was that I did not have a telephone landline, and their box needed one in order to phone home with its data. They initially said there was nothing they could do, but a couple of months later they called back and offered to pay for the landline if I had one installed.
They then asked for details about my TVs and such, down to the brands and model numbers. This is becuase they had to hook up monitoring equipment to measure the channel selected by the tuner, whether the VCR was playing or recording, etc. Everything was OK until we got to my MythTV box (with PVR-350 card). They could not monitor it properly, so we had to call the whole thing off. The technician (who was quite impressed with what MythTV could do) said that they might have ways to monitor such setups in the future, but he wasn't sure about it.
Too damn late for Farscape or Futurama...
Whenever Mrs. Fitch breaks wind, we beat the dog.
The steps are a radical change for Nielsen, reflecting an overall paradigm shift that's shaking up the television world. The audience is taking control. And TV companies are scrambling to catch up."
This isn't a paradigm shift, it's expansion of technology. Media entertainment is still media entertainment and people still watch it to be entertained. The ways people can access that media have expanded, but there has been no overall shift as a result.
Also, audiences aren't taking control. These extensions of media access are tickling media providers to death. Even Tivo, while cutting out advertising, reflects the audience demand for More! More! The problems Tivo presents to a media provider are only temporary. Media providers are recognizing the audience's unquenchable thirst for more! more! more! and they are finding ways to make even more money off of that thirst. It isn't victory of the audience, it's victory of the provider.
I love my sig.
I was a Nielsen Television watcher for about year and a half, ending about a year ago. Instead of using my people meter while I watched television, I downloaded the shows to watch them on my computer. During this time, both Enterprise and Wonderfalls, shows I enjoyed immensely, were cancelled.
Although I drained the ratings , which would have been higher should I have actually physically watched the television, I felt it was important since I was representing those of us who had the technology to bypass television completely. I explained this to the Neilsen folks, and they weren't interested in my alternative viewing habits. Concurrently, I also downloaded and watched the first season of the apprentice, with it's integrated product placements. That exposure, from a rating point of view, possibly should have been counted, but there is no way of them measuring that. Even with this new system, they still won't count imbedded commercial watching. Microsoft, for example, paid a pretty penny to be included in the latest episode of the apprentice.
I'm glad Neilsen is finally catching up with technology. I suspect that ratings will shift pretty dramatically when DVRs are used primarily rate the shows. Commercial watching, however, will be seen as happening much less, which I suppose is appropriate since those of that can, do watch as few commercials as possible. Sadly, prefering to watch content and even being pretty unwilling to watch commercials may in the long run prevent content geared to those kinds of individuals from being created. No watching commercials = low ratings = not enough money to produce. Yet I still do everythign I can to limit down commercial watching as much as possible. I realize that may constitute copyright infringement, but I still enjoy the entertainment so much more without having to hear 'these important messages.'
WTF are TV privileges? Shouldn't this be 'capability' at least?
If by "taking control" you mean "getting permission" then the only 'catching-up' going on here is in how quickly content-owners can implement acceptable (to them) access controls for the proliferation and fragmentation of potential TV-viewing media.
sig my booty, check my website
Setting aside my opinion of 60 Minutes for a moment, the idea of placing a crap show after the football game is stupid. You've got all this viewership watching your station, then you shoo them away by switching to, say, a Mork and Mindy rerun that's already in progress. That's stupid. What you want to do is keep the viewership by following the game with another good show, and then another. To hell with the schedule, the only thing that matters is the number of eyes watching. Once that number drops down to normal, then you can switch back to regularly scheduled programming. (Of course, a clever broadcaster would just add in a few extra commercials here and there to bring them back to schedule).
I have nothing particular against 60 Minutes, or Mork and Mindy. I watch TV for entertainment, and I don't find politics or news entertaining. So, given the choice... Nanu-Nanu baby.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I wonder how marketing firms will use this new TiVo data? Will they discount the value of a show which was recorded and not watched live (because people can skip the commercials)?
And what about people who do not have TiVo, how will their votes count? I have a friend with a DVD/RW with VCR+ that lets him record like TiVo, but without the $12 a month fee. It is not connected to any phone line, and it works well. I guess he will not get a vote?
Is the anwser a system like Amazon, where everyone can leave remarks and generate buzz? TVTOME would have been the perfect website for that kind of task, but since they are gone and cnet took over, I do not trust a corporation.
I hope we get well written shows that require some IQ, not just the same lame sex jokes and reality tv.
Nielsen is a load of crap. I was a nielsen viewer for about 3 months before I got pissed off enough and told them to come and take their equipment away. The biggest problem was how they set up their equipment to track what you watch. When they are trying to sell you on doing it, they say that they "attach some probes to the inside of the tv", and "only have to take off the outer plastic casing". That is a load of BS - and the idiot technitians who did this didn't make me feel any better about it either. They came barging in with wiring schematics and started soldering away... yes, soldering about 20 wires to the inside of the tv and cable box. To make things worse they did not give me a very warm feeling that they knew what they at all what they were doing. THere were 3 of them soldering away for a couple of hours to hook up 2 tv's. Of course they tell you that if they damange anything, they will replace it, but is it really worth the $50 every 6 months or whatever they give you? The next thing that sucked, after the pain of ripping apart and soldering components to 2 tv's was the equipment itself. Because I have 2 tv's, they hooked up 2 boxes that looked like they came from 1975. The remotes to control them looked equally horrible... with two smaller boxes vecro'd ghetto style to the back of the tv's... All in all it looked like something a fat sweaty guy built himself in his garage. Next came the bright red blinking lights when you did not hit the button on the remote telling the box that you were still watching the program - which they also failed to tell me. Half of the time I was so annoyed by the blinking lights, and the fact that I had to use their 1975 style remote hitting button every time I changed a station that I'm sure I wasn't doing it right, out of spite for such a crappy system. I finally just disconnected the piece of crap when I got a new tv that I didn't want them touching. I'm sure at least half of the types of people who would put up with this much BS just have to "have their voice heard" (as Nielsen advertised it) about what they watch do not use the system right either. For people who flip alot, it sucks to have to hit another button on another remote every time you change the station and start watching for more than 5 minutes.
wow, where to even start? how about with the name, it's Nielsen (not nielson). but what's that matter?
it's not nielsen that cancels our favorite tv shows, it's a nation of idiotic tv viewers. the same reason radio is unlistenable, it's crap like britany spears that sells...that's what people listen to. everyone's busy watching "the biggest loser", "the oc" or "desperate hosewivse" to waste their time with anything that might make them think.
nielsen's ratings are far from flawed, and they do everything possible to ensure so. countless lawsuits and independent studies have verified this, which a small amount of research can verify.
nielsen is not a dying company, it's actually owned by a huge media comany VNU inc. don't worry, they're pulling in money hand over fist. they monitor much more than just tv ratings, like advetising, grocery store purchases, radio airplay...the billboard charts are even owned by the same company.
they may not be on top of the newest technologies, but you can be sure keeping an eye on and working on all of them. things like this take time. dvr's are still relatively new, and are in a pretty small percentage of households. they can't just introduce a new way to measure what everyone watches without it being 100% tested and verfied as accurate, or else they're ratings would be off and their credibility gone.
nielsen isn't to blame, they're just reporting on the sad truths of american culture.
I am amazed that no geeks have even asked HOW they plan to monitor all the iPods, PVRs and TV enabled cell phones. Does everyone out there think that Nielsen will try to strap a PeopleMeter onto all of these gadgets? Of course not! The "new" technology that they are coming out with and represents a "paradigm shift" for them is a beeper sized gizmo that PEOPLE must wear that records sound samples and compresses them along with a timestamp. These sound samples will capture an inaudible (to humans) beacon that will be inserted into all broadcasts. These samples are then synched at night though the phone and compared to a master database of the sounds emitted by EVERY TV channel and Radio station out there! This way, they will know what you where exposed to at all times, even if you where in your car listening to radio, in a bar with the TV in the background, or watching something on your PC.
I wonder how they are planning to hear my iPod though my headphones...