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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."
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.
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.
Too damn late for Farscape or Futurama...
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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.
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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.'
Interesting, but those execs would be shooting themselves in the foot. Advert $$ depends on ROI. (in the long term, the market will relax to this position, but in the short term, companies may actively be measuring and optimizing) So improperly measuring viewership is a fast road to losing all advertising dollars.
What I've been wondering though is why we have neilson anymore at all. With the advent of digital cable, it would seem to me that it's now possible to monitor directly the viewing habits of millions of people. That's a large sample. If made optional, i would even opt-in to just such monitoring, since it would mean that every time i watched my favorite shows i'd be casting a vote to keep it on the air.
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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.
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With cable companies and dish networks pushing DVRs how are companies using Neilson since many of those DVRs allow users to skip over commercials? Personally I have been using MythTV for almost a year now. I never watch live TV anymore and as a result I see very few commercials. If I understand correctly broadcasters use Neilson ratings to set the price of commercials on different shows. With DVRs becoming more common allowing more people to skip commercials won't this make Neilson ratings useless and ultimately cause advertisers to reduce spending since they are not really reaching as many people as are watching the shows. And by
The scary part of all this is that recently there has been talk about letting cable companies offer channels ala cart. I figure this will eventual evolve into user paid support for channels and ultimately into users paying for each show directly. This should result in commercials getting dropped from shows supported in this method. But this will lead to commercial placements directly in the shows.